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Royce,  Josiah,  1855-1916. 

The  problem  of  Christianity.  I^tures  delivered  at  the 
Lowell  institute  in  Boston,  and  at  Manchester  collecre  Ox- 
ford, by  Josiah  Royce  ...  New  York,  The  Macmillan  com- 
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1.  Chrlstlniiltj— 20tli  cent        i.  Title. 


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D191H81       Copy  in  Philosophy.     1914. 
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THE  LIBRARIES 


LIBRARY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


iiSKtWltS&ilMi^iliiAii  --^^^ 


yoy 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


LECTURES   DELIVERED  AT  THE    LOWELL 
INSTITUTE  IN  BOSTON,  AND  AT  MAN- 
CHESTER   COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


;T^^o 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NKW  YORK   •    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Lm 

TORONTO 


BY 

JOSIAH   ROYCE 

D.Sc.  (University  of  Oxford) 

PROFESSOR    OF    THE    HISTORY    OF    PHILOSOPHY 
IN   HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 


VOLUME   I 
THE   CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE   OF   LIFE 


Nefo  gork 

THE  MACFILtAX   COMPANY 

1914 


"> 


•^\ 


COPt^lOHT,   1918, 

Bt  the  M  ACM  ill  an  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  clectrotyped.    Published  May,  1913.    Reprinted 


y 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD 

I   GRATEFULLY   DEDICATE 
THIS  BOOK 


J.  8.  .C^sl^  Go.  —  6«rwi<^k  A;  Sraltli  Co 


■     t 


■  »  1  • 

I      •     c 


•  •  .«  •     i 

*  •  .   •    < 

•  •      •       •     » 


I 


I 


PREFACE 


loyalty       discussed.     Of    th^,^    f         ■ 

voiu.es,  one  is  entitled  '.;'r.::j^^^^^ 
o^er   Essays   on   the  Philosophy   of  Li^»' 
and    contains,    amongst    other    theses     t h ' 
assertion  that  the  "spirit  of  loyalty.   L'  al 
to  supply  us  not  only  with  a  "  nhf       1 
life,"  but  with  .      I  PWosophy  of 

'       "^  ^""  a  religion  which  is  "freP  fro.v, 
superstition"  and  whiVK  •    •     !        ^'^ee  from 

ana  which  IS  in  harmony  with 
a  genuinely  rational  yiew  of  the  world  In 
1912  were  published,  by  the  ScnK  \r 

York    the   «R         T  ^cribners  m  New 

deiitred    in  th""     "'""'"   ^'^'^^   ^   ^^^ 

-estiiLtii:^,:^^-!^^^^ 

^ctures      was    entitled    "The    Religion    of 


PREFACE 

Loyalty" ;  and  the  volume  in  question  con- 
tained the  promise  that,  in  a  future  discus- 
sion, I  would,  if  possible,  attempt  to  "apply 
the  principles"  there  laid  down  to  the  special 
case  of  Christianity.  The  present  work  re- 
deems that  promise  according  to  the  best  of 

my  ability. 

I 

The  task  of  these  two  volumes  is  defined 
in  the  opening  lecture  of  the  first  volume. 
The  main  results  are  carefully  summed  up  in 
Lectures  XV  and  XVI,  at  the  close  of  the 
second  volume.  This  book  can  be  under- 
stood without  any  previous  reading  of  my 
"Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  and  without  any 
acquaintance  with  my  "Bross  Lectures." 
Yet  in  case  my  reader  finds  himself  totally 
at  variance  with  the  interpretation  of  Chris- 
tianity here  expounded,  he  should  not  finally 
condemn  my  book  without  taking  the  trouble 
to  compare  its  principal  theses  with  those 
which  my  various  preliminary  studies  of 
"loyalty,"  and  of  the  religion  of  loyalty, 
contain. 

In    brief,   since   1908,   my   "philosophy  of 


VIU 


PREFACE 

loyalty "  has  been    growing.     Its    .uecessive 
expressions,   as  I   beliVv..    f  ""^cessive 

bodv  of  Mh-    I  '      ™  ^  consistent 

oom  ot  ethical  as  well  as  r^f  ^„r  • 

anW    t»o  k-  ^  religious  op  nion 

its;„n:LTr' '-  -'^^  '"^•■^  -- 

capable  of  T     •  u  "'^"    experience,    and 

capable  of  furnishing  a  foundation  for  a  de 

ensible  form  of  metaphysical  idealism  But" 
the  depth  and  vitality  of  the  ideal  of  loyat 
have  become  better  known  to  me  as  I  hJ 

gone  on  with  my  work      F.  t     *  ^ 

t^  ^  ^''^eh  of  mv  efforf« 

to  express  what  I  have  found  in  th'e  course 

eri:^:;'  1^^^^^^^    -- --^ts.  My 

of  loya  tv'    h  ";  '"'"'""^  '^'  "'•^''^'«° 

book     to    vi  '  ^'"^*'   ^^^   ™^'  -   this 

^ook     to    views    concerning   the    essence   of 
C Wiamty   such    that,    if    they    have    any 
^uth     hey  need  to  be  carefully  considered 
J  they  are,   m  certain   essential   respects 
novel   views;    and   they  concern   ,U 
i:^         1  I  '^   <-oncern  the  centra  1 

life-problems  of  all   of   us. 

II 

What  these  relatively  novel  opinions  are 

the  reader  mav    ,*  u       .  "'ons  are, 

may,  ,f  he  chooses,  discover  for 


PREFACE 

himself.  If  he  is  minded  to  undertake  the 
task,  he  will  be  aided  by  beginning  with  the 
"Introduction,"  which  immediately  follows 
the  "Table  of  Contents"  in  the  first  volume 
of  this  book.  This  introduction  contains 
an  outline  of  the  lectures,  —  an  outline  which 
was  used,  by  my  audience,  when  the  text  of 
this  discussion  was  read  at  Manchester  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  between  January  13  and  March 

6,  1913. 

But  a  further  brief  and  preliminary  indica- 
tion is  here  in  order  to  prepare  the  reader  a 
Httle  better  for  what  is  to  follow. 

This  book  is  not  the  work  of  an  historian, 
nor  yet  of  a  technical  theologian.  It  is  the 
outcome  of  my  own  philosophical  study  of 
certain  problems  belonging  to  ethics,  to  re- 
ligious experience,  and  to  general  philosophy. 
In  spirit  I  believe  my  present  book  to  be 
in  essential  harmony  with  the  bases  of  the 
philosophical  idealism  set  forth  in  various 
earlier  volumes  of  my  own,  and  especially  in 
the  work  entitled  "The  World  and  the  In- 
dividual" (published  in  1899-1901).  On  the 
other   hand,   the   present   work   contains   no 


fiiiiMifiiiiritMaffiniaitittlrftft 


PREFACE 

mere  repetition  of  my  former  expressions  of 
opmion.     There  is  much  in  it  which  I  did 
not  expect   to   say  when   I  began  the  task 
here  accomplished.     As  to  certain  metaphys- 
ical opmions  which  are  stated,  in  outline,  in 
the  second  volume  of  this  book,  I  now  owe 
much   more  to  our  great  and   unduly   neg- 
lected American  logician,  Mr.  Charles  Peirce 
than  I  do  to  the  common  tradition  of  recent 
Idealism    and  certainly  very  much  more  than 
I  ever  have  owed,  at  any  point  of  my  own 
philosophical  development,  to  the  doctrines 
which,  with  technical  accuracy,  can  be  justly 
"'*f"*^^*°   Hegel,     litis   time.   I  think, 
that    the    long    customary,    but   unjust  and 
loose    usage    of    the    adjective    "Hegelian" 
should  be  dropped.     The  genuinely  Hegelian 
views  were  the  ones  stated  by  Hegel  himself, 
and  by  his  early  followers.     My  own  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity,  in  these  volumes 
despite  certain  agreements  with  the  classical 
Hegelian  theses,  differs  from  that  of  Hegel 
and  of  the  classical  Hegelian  school,  in  im- 
portant ways  which  I  can,  with  a  clear  con- 
science, all  the  more  vigorously  emphasize. 


PREFACE 


just  because  I  have,  all  my  life,  endeavored 
to  treat  Hegel  both  with  careful  historical 
justice  and  with  genuine  appreciation.  In 
fact  the  present  is  a  distinctly  new  interpreta- 
tion of  the  "Problem  of  Christianity." 

One  of  the  most  thoughtful  and  one  of  the 
fairest  of  the  reviewers  of  my  "Spirit  of 
Modern  Philosophy"  said  of  my  former 
position,  as  stated,  in  1892,  in  the  book  thus 
named,  that  I  then  came  nearer  to  being  a 
follower  of  Schopenhauer  than  a  disciple  of 
Hegel.  As  far  as  it  went  this  statement 
gave  a  just  impression  of  how  I  then  stood. 
I  have  never,  since  then,  been  more  of  an 
Hegelian  than  at  that  time  I  was.  I  am 
now  less  so   than   ever   before. 


Ill 

One  favorite  and  facile  way  of  disposing 
of  a  student  of  idealistic  philosophy  who 
writes  about  religion  is  to  say  that  he  has 
first  formed  a  system  of  "abstract  concep- 
tions," whose  interest,  if  they  have  any  in- 
terest, is  purely  technical,  and  whose  relation 
to  the  concrete   religious   concerns   of  man- 

xii 


PREFACE 

kind  is  wholly  external  and  formal ;   and  that 
he  has  then  tried  to  steal  popular  favor  by  mis- 
usmg  traditional   religious   phraseology,    and 
by   Identifying  his   "sterile   intellectualism  " 
and  these  his  barren  technicalities,  with  the 
religious  beliefs  and  experiences  of  mankind 
through  taking  a  vicious  advantage  of  am- 
biguous words. 

I  can  only  ask  any  one  who  approaches 
this  book  to  read  Volume  I  before  he  under- 
takes to  judge  the  metaphysical  discussions 
which  form  the  bulk  of  Volume  II;    and  also 
to   weigh    the    relations    between    my   meta- 
physical   and    my    religious    phraseologv    in 
the  light  of  the  summary  contained  in  lec- 
tures XV  and  XVI  of  the  second  volume. 

If  after  such  a  reading  of  my  actual  opin- 
ions,  as  set  down   in   this   book,  he  stiJl  in- 
sists that   I  have  endeavored  artificially    to 
force  a  set  of  foreign  and  preconceived  meta- 
physical   "abstractions"    upon    the    genuine 
religious  life  of  my  brethren,  I  cannot  sup- 
ply  him  with  fairness  of  estimate,  but  ought 
to    remain    indifferent    to    his    manner    of 
speech. 


Xlll 


PREFACE 

As  a  fact,  this  book  is  the  outcome  of  expe- 
rience, and,  in  its  somewhat  extended  practi- 
cal sections,  it  is  written  (if  I  may  borrow  a 
phrase  from  the  Polish  master  of  romance, 
Sienkiewicz),  "for  the  strengthening  of  hearts." 
That    some   portions   of   the   discussion    are 
technically   metaphysical  is  a  result  of  the 
deliberate  plan  of  the  whole  work ;  and  tech- 
nical assertions  demand,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
technical  criticisms.     The  novelty  of  some  of 
my  metaphysical  theses  in  my  second  volume, 
and    the   lack   of   space   for   their   adequate 
statement    in    this    book,    have    made    their 
exposition,  as  I  here  have  time  to  give  it, 
both  incomplete,  and  justly  subject  to  many 
objections,  some  of  which  I  have  anticipated 
in  my  text.     But,  in  any  case,  I  have  not 
been  merely  telling  anybody's  old  story  over 

again. 

Since  I  have  been  writing  from  the  life,  I 
of  course  owe  a  great  deal  to  the  inspiration 
that  I  long  ago  obtained  from  William  James's 
"Varieties  of  Religious  Experience."  I  even 
venture  to  hope  that  (while  I  have  of  course 
laid  stress  upon  no  interests  which  I  could 

xiv 


PREFACE 

-rxro::;vr^--eoii. 

in.  at  least^re^L^td ir  ^  ^^^-^- 

to   understand,   and   pw   si     r  ^''^ 
echo,  a  cry  of  genuine  f  r         '°'^'^''^^'    to 
it      P.       ,.     genuine  feeJmg  when  thev  hear 
".    iior,  after  all,  it  i,  ,„<.,.    • 
we  should  together  ''"Portant  that 

than  that  we  should  l  '°^  ^'^e-interests 

So  I  havii:;:,' \z  "* °"^ '°™"'- 

«Pea^  as  one  Idere"  pea^:  /^''^    'r''   *« 

-  ^^s  friend,  when  the  wal  -.7 "^*'" "^° 
scure.  ^  '^  ^ong  and  ob- 

Yet    in    one   very    important   resn«.f    ,u 
religious  experience  upon  which  inT^K  ^ 
I  most  depend,  differs  very  lof       5'  7^' 
that  whose  "varieties"  T        P'?^"""^'^  ^om 

This  social  form  of  ..      •  Church. 

which  loyaltyTpends  7""  ''  ''''  "P^ 

the   religion.;   Z  ""^^  '"PPosed  that 

eiig^ous   experience  of  a   church   must 

XV 


PREFACE 

needs  be   "conventional,"   and  consequently 
must  be  lacking  in  depth  and  in  sincerity. 

This,  to  my  mind,  was  a  profound  and  a  mo- 
mentous error  in  the  whole  religious  philos- 
ophy of  our  greatest  American  master  in  the 
study  of  the  psychology  of  religious  experience. 
All  experience  must  be  at  least  individual 
experience;  but  unless  it  is  also  social  ex- 
perience, and  unless  the  whole  religious  com- 
munity which  is  in  question  unites  to  share 
it,  this  experience  is  but  as  sounding  brass, 
and  as  a  tinkling  cymbal.  This  truth  is 
what  Paul  saw.  This  is  the  rock  upon  which 
the  true  and  ideal  church  is  built.  This  is 
the  essence  of  Christianity. 

If  indeed  I  myself  must  cry  "out  of  the 
depths"  before  the  light  can  come  to  me,  it 
must  be  my  Community  that,  in  the  end, 
saves  me.  To  assert  this  and  to  live  this 
doctrine  constitute  the  very  core  of  Chris- 
tian experience,  and  of  the  "Religion  of 
Loyalty."  In  discussing  "the  varieties  of 
religious  experience,"  which  here  concern 
us,  I  have  everywhere  kept  this  thesis  in 
mind. 


PREFACE 


IV 


The  assertion  just  made  summarizes    the 
single  thought  to  whose  discussion,  illustra- 
tion, defence,  and  philosophy  this    book    is 
devoted.     This   assertion   is   the   one   which, 
in  my  "Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  I  was  trying,' 
so  far  as  I  then  could,  to  expound  and  to 
apply.     We  are  saved,  if  at  all,  by  devotion 
to  the  Community,  in  the  sense  of  that  term 
which  these  two  volumes  attempt  to  explain 
and    to   defend.     This   is    what   I    mean    by 
loyalty.     Because  the  word  ''  loyalty  "  ends  in 
ty,  and  because  what  a  "Community"  is,  is 
at  present  so  ill  understood  by  most  philos- 
ophers, my  former  discussions  of   this    topic 
have  been  accused  of  basing  all  the  duties  of 
life  upon  an  artificial  abstraction.     When  I 
now  say  that  by  loyalty  I  mean  the  practi^ 
cally  devoted  love  of  an  individual  for  a  com^ 
munity,  I  shall  still  leave  unenlightened  those 
who  stop  short  at  the  purely  verbal  fact  that 
the    word    "community"    also    ends    in    ty. 
But  let   such   readers   wait   until   they  have 
at  least  read   Lectures   I,   III,   and    VII    of 


J 


^'f 


xvu 


PREFACE 


my  first  volume.     Then  they  may  know  what 
is  at  issue. 

This  book,  if  it  is  nothing  else,  is  at  least 
one  more  effort  to  tell  what  loyalty  is.  I  also 
want  to  put  loyalty  —  this  love  of  the  indi- 
i  vidual  for  the  community  —  where  it  actually 
belongs,  not  only  at  the  heart  of  the  virtues, 
not  only  at  the  summit  of  the  mountains 
which  the  human  spirit  must  climb  if  man  is 
really  to  be  saved,  but  also  (where  it  equally 
belongs)  at  the  turning-point  of  human  his- 
tory, —  at  the  point  when  the  Christian  ideal 
was  first  defined,  —  and  when  the  Church 
Universal, — that  still  invisible  Community  of 
all  the  faithful,  that  homeland  of  the  human 
spirit,  "which  eager  hearts  expect,"  was  first 
introduced  as  a  vision,  as  a  hope,  as  a  con- 
scious longing  to  mankind.  I  want  to  show 
what  loyalty  is,  and  that  all  this  is  true  of  the 
loyal  spirit. 

Some  of  my  main  theses,  in  this  book,  are 
the  following:  First,  Christianity  is,  in  its 
essence,  the  most  typical,  and,  so  far  in  human 
history,  the  most  highly  developed  religion  of 
loyalty.     Secondly,  loyalty  itself  is  a  perfectly 

zviii 


PREFACE 

concrete  form  and  interest  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  mankind.     Thirdly,  this  very  fact  about 
the  meamng  and  the  value  of  universal  loy- 
alty IS  one  which  the  Apostle  Paul  learned  in 
and  from  the  social  and  religious  life  of  the 
early   Christian   communities,   and  then  en- 
riched and  transformed  through  his  own  work 
as  missionary  and  teacher.      Still  another  of 
my  theses  is  this :  Whatever  may  hereafter 
be  the  fortunes  of  Christian  institutions,  or  of 
Christian  traditions,  the  religion  of  loyalty 
the  doctrine  of  the  salvation  of  the  otherwise 
hopelessly  lost   individual   through   devotion 
to  the  life  of  the  genuinely  real  and  Universal 
Community,  must  survive,  and  must  direct 
the  future  both  of  religion  and  of  mankind, 
It  man  is  to  be  saved  at  all.^  As  to  what  the 
word   "salvation"  means,  and  as  to  why  I 
use  It,  the  reader  can  discover,  if  he  chooses, 
from  the  text  of  these  lectures. 


The  doctrines  of  the  Community,  of  Loy- 
alty, of  the  "lost  state  of  the  natural  individ- 
ual," and  of  Atonement  as  the^  function  in 


XIX 


PREFACE 

which  the  life  of  the  community  culminates, 
appear,  in  the  volumes  of  this  book,  in  two 
forms,  whose  clear  distinction  and  close  con- 
nection ought  next  to  be  emphasized  in  this 
preface.     First,  these  doctrines,  and  the  ideas 
in   terms   of   which   they   are   expressed,   are 
verifiable  results  of  the  higher  social  religious 
experience  of  mankind.     Were  there  no  Chris- 
tianity,   were    there    no    Christians    in    the 
world,  all  these  ideas  would  be  needed  to  ex- 
press the  meaning  of  true  loyalty,  the  saving 
value  of  the  right  relation  of  any  human  in- 
dividual to  the  community  of  which  he  is  a 
member,  and  the  true  sense  of  life.     These 
doctrines,    then,    need    no    dogmas    of    any 
historical    church    to    define    them,    and    no 
theology,     and     no     technical     metaphysical 
theory,   to   furnish    a   foundation   for   them. 
In  the  second  place,  however,  these  Chris- 
tian ideas  are  based  upon  deep  metaphysical 
truths     whose     significance     is    more     than 

human. 

Historically  speaking,  the  Christian  church 
first  discovered  the  Christian  ideas.  The 
founder  of  Christianity,  so  far  as  we  know 

XX 


PREFACE 

what  his  teachings  were,  seems  not  to  have 
defined   them  adequately.     They   first   came 
to   a   relatively   full   statement   through    the 
religious  life  of  the  Pauline  Churches ;  and  the 
Pauline  epistles  contain  their  first,  although 
still   not  quite  complete,  formulation.     Paul 
himself  was  certainly  not  the  founder  of  Chris- 
tianity.     But  the  Pauline  communities   first 
were  conscious  of  the  essence  of  Christianity. 
Consequently    those    are    right    who    have 
held,  what  the  '^modernists"  of  the  Roman 
Church    were   for  a  time   asserting,  —  before 
officialism  turned  its  back,  in  characteristic 
fashion,    upon    the    really    new    and    deeply 
valuable  light  which   these  modernists  were, 
for  the  time,  bringing  to  their  own  commun-' 
ion.     Those,  I  say,  are  right  who  have  held 
that  the  Church,  rather  than   the  person  of 
the  founder,  ought  to  be  viewed  as  the  cen- 
tral idea  of  Christianity. 

On  the  other  hand,  neither  the  "modern- 
ists"  of  recent  controversy,  nor  any  other  of 
the  apologists  for  the  traditions  of  the  his- 
torical Christian  church,  have  yet  seen  the 
meaning  of  the  "religion  of  loyalty"  as  the 


XXI 


immiS^^^sMM 


% 


PREFACE 

Apostle  Paul,  in  certain  of  his  greatest  mo- 
ments and  words,  saw  and  expressed  that 
meaning.  The  apostle's  language,  regarding 
this  matter,  is  as  imperishable  as  it  is  well 
warranted  by  human  experience,  and  as  it  is 
also  separable  from  the  accidents  of  later 
dogmatic  formulation,  and  inexhaustible  in 
the  metaphysical  problems  which  it  brings  to 

our  attention. 

Hence  the  most  significant  task  for  a  modern 
revision  of  our  estimate  of  what  is  vital  m 
Christianity  depends  upon  the  recognition  of 
certain  aspects  of  Christian  social  experi- 
ence and  of  human  destiny,  aspects  to  whose 
exposition  and  defence,  first  in  empirical 
terms,  and  then  in  the  light  of  a  reexamina- 
tion of  certain  fundamental  metaphysical 
ideas,  these  two  volumes  are  devoted. 

The  "Christian  ideas"  of  the  Church,  of 
the  lost  state  of  man,  of  grace,  and  of  atone- 
ment, are  here  discussed,  first  separately, 
and  then  in  their  natural  union.  In  this 
examination,  Pauline  Christianity  receives  a 
prominence  which  I  believe  to  be  justified 
by  the  considerations  which  are  emphasized 

xxii 


PREFACE 

m  my  text.  After  an  extended  discussion, 
in  the  second  volume,  of  the  "metaphysics 
of  the  Christian  ideas,"  I  return,  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  research,  to  the  relation 
of  Christianity  to  our  modern  social  ex- 
perience, and  to  the  problems  of  to-day. 

The  outcome  of  this   method    of   dealing 
with  "The  Problem  of  Christianity"  involves, 
I    believe,  not   indeed    a  "solution,"    but   a' 
great  simplification  of  the  problems  of  Chris- 
tology,  of  dogma  in  general,  and  of  the  rela- 
tions between  the  true  interests  of  philosophy 
upon   the   one   side,   and   rehgion   upon   the 
other.     The  reader  will  somewhat  dimly  see 
the  nature  of  the  simplification  in  question 
when  he  reads  Lecture  I.     In  Lecture  III, 
on  the  "Realm  of  Grace,"  he  will  begin  to' 
anticipate   with   greater   clearness   the   char- 
acteristic outlines  of  my  version  of  the  "re- 
ligion of  loyalty."     But  not  until  Lectures 
XV  and  XVI  will  the  outcome  of  the  closely 
connected    story    to    which,    despite    many 
episodes,  the  whole  book  is  devoted,  be  ready 
for  the  reader's  final  judgment. 


XXIU 


I 


PEEFACE 


VI 


It  is  necessary  still  to  forestall  one  fairly 
obvious    criticism.     Both     "orthodox"     and 
"liberal"  Christianity,  as  they  usually  state 
their    otherwise    conflicting    opinions,    very 
commonly    agree    in   making    their  different 
attempted    solutions    of    the    "Problem    of 
Christianity"  depend  upon  the  views  which 
they  respectively  defend  regarding  the  per- 
son of  the  founder  of  the  faith.     In  Lecture 
VIII   of    the   first   volume,    and  in  Lecture 
XVI  of  the  second  volume,  I  have  summa- 
rized the  little  that  I  have  to  say  about  the 
person  of  the  founder. 

I   cannot   find   in   the   ordinary   "liberal 
solution  of  the  problem  of  the  personaHty 
of  Jesus,  as  Harnack,  as  Weinel,  and  as  most 
"advanced  liberal"  discussions  of  our  topic 
state  that  solution,  anything  satisfactory. 

My  principal  reason  for  this  dissatisfac- 
tion, when  urged  against  the  usual "  liberal " 
view  of  the  significance  of  the  person  of 
Jesus,  is  a  novel,  but,  if  I  am  right,  a  momen- 
tous reason.     If  Christianity  is,  in  its  inmost 


XXIV 


PREFACE 

essence,   the   "religion   of  loyalty,"   the   reli- 
gion of  that  which  in  this  book  I  have  called 
"The  Beloved  Community,"  and  if  Pauline 
Christianity  contained  the  essence  of  the  only 
doctrine  by  which   mankind,   through  devo- 
tion to  the  community,  through  loyalty,  are 
to   be   saved, —  then   Buddhism    is   right   in 
holding  that  the  very  form  of  the  individual 
self  is  a  necessary  source  of  woe  and  of  wrong. 
In  that  case,  no  individual  human  self  can  be 
saved  except  through  ceasing  to  be  a  ?nere 
individual. 

But  if  this  be  so,  Harnack's  view  and  the 
usual  "liberal"  view,  to  the  effect  that  there 
was    an    ideally    perfect    human    individual, 
whose  example,  or  whose  personal  influence, 
involves  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  human 
life,  and  is  saving,  —  this  whole  view  is  an 
opinion    essentially   opposed    to    the   deepest 
facts  of  human  nature,  and  to  the  very  es- 
sence   of    the    "religion    of    loyalty."      Not 
through  imitating  nor  yet  through  loving  any 
mere    individual    human    being   can    we    be 
saved,    but    only    through     loyalty    to    the 
"Beloved    Community." 

XXV 


PREFACE 

Equally,  however,  must  I  decline  to  follow 
any  of  the  various  forms  of  traditionally 
orthodox  dogma  or  theory  regarding  the 
person  of  Christ.  Legends,  doubtful  his- 
torical hypotheses,  and  dogmas  leave  us,  in 
this  field,  in  well-known,  and,  to  my  mind, 
simply  hopeless  perplexities. 

Hence  this  book  has  no  positive  thesis  to 
maintain  regarding  the  person  of  the  founder 
of  Christianity.     I  am  not  competent  to  settle 
any    of   the   numerous   historical    doubts    as 
to  the  founder's  person,  and  as  to  the  details 
of  his  life.     The  thesis  of  this  book  is  that 
the  essence  of  Christianity,  as   the    Apostle 
Paul  stated  that  essence,  depends  upon  re- 
garding the  being  which  the  early  Christian 
Church  believed  itself  to  represent,  and  the 
being  which  I  call,  in  this  book,  the  "Beloved 
Community,"    as   the   true    source,    through 
loyalty,  of  the  salvation  of  man.     This  doc- 
trine I  hold  to  be  both  empirically  verifiable 
within  the  limits  of  our  experience,  and  meta- 
physically   defensible    as    an    expression    of 
the  life  and  the  spiritual  significance  of  the 
whole  universe. 

xxvi 


PREFACE 

A  distinguished  authority  upon  Christology, 
who  has  kindly  listened  to  some  of  my  lec- 
tures, and  who  has  kindly  honored  me  with 
his  criticism,  points  out  to  me,  however,  the 
final  objection  which  I  can  here  mention. 

"You  imagine,"  he  says,  "that  early  Chris- 
tianity depended,  for  the  significance  of  its 
faith,  upon  the  fact  that  a  certain  body  of 
men,  constituting  the  Pauline  churches,  were 
loyal  to  the  spiritual  unity,  to  the  ideal  charity, 
which,  as  they  believed,  the  saving  work  of  . 
Christ  had  freely  given  to  them,  and  to  their 
community.     But   you    speak   of   this   early 
Christian  community  as  if  it  were  its  own 
creator,  — as   if   it   grew    up    spontaneously, 
as  if  its  form  of  saving  and  universal  loyalty 
arose    without    any   cause.     Can    you    make 
religious    history    intelligible    in    this    way.? 
Who    created    the    church.?     Who    inspired 
the  new  loyalty  ?     Was  not  the  founder  the 
cause  of  his  church  ?    How  could  the  church 
have    existed    without    its    founder.?     Must 
not  the  founder  have  possessed,   as   an   in- 
dividual,   a    spiritual    power    equivalent    to 
that  which  he  exerted.?     Must  it  not  then 

xxvii 


PREFACE 

have  been  Jesus  himself,  and  not  the  Com- 
munity, —  not    the    church,  —  which    is    the 
central    source    of    Christianity?     Otherwise 
does  not  your  theory  hang  in  the  air  ?     But 
if  the  founder  really  created  this  community 
and  its  loyalty,  does  not  the  whole  meaning 
of  the  Christian  religion  once  more  centre  in 
the  founder,  in  his  life,  and  in  his  person  ?  " 
I  can  here  only  reply  to  my  kindly  critic 
that  this  book  (as  Lecture  III  carefully  points 
out)   has  no  hypothesis  whatever  to  offer  as 
to  how  the  Christian  community  originated. 
Personally  I  shall  never  hope,  in  my  present 
existence,  to  know  anything  whatever  about 
that  origin,  beyond  the  barest  commonplaces. 
The  historical  evidence  at  hand  is  insufficient 
to  tell  us  how  the  church  originated.     The 
legends  do  not  solve  the  problem.     I  have  a 
right  to  decline,  and  I  actually  decline  to  ex- 
press  an    opinion    as   to    any    details    about 
the   person    and    life    of    the    founder.      For 
such  an  opinion  the  historical  evidences  are 
lacking,  although  it  seems  to  me  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  sayings   and   the   parables 
which    tradition    attributed    to    the  founder 

xxviii 


PREFACE 

were  the  work  of  some  single  author,  con- 
cerning  whose  life  we  probably  possess  some 
actually  correct  reports. 

On  the  other  hand,  regarding  the  essence  of 
the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches  and  con- 
cerning the  actual  life  of  those  churches,  we  pos- 
sess, in  the  Pauline  epistles,  information  which 
is  priceless,  which  reveals  to  us  the  religion 
of  loyalty  in  its  classic  and  universal  form,  and 
which  involves  the  Christian  ideas  expounded, 
in  my  own  poor  way,  in  what  here  follows. 

The  transformation,  not  of  historical,  but 
of  Christological,  of  ethical,  and  of  religious 
ideas  which  would  follow  upon  an  adequate 
recognition    of    these    simple    considerations 
amply  justifies  the  efl'ort  of  one  wlio  under- 
takes, as  I  do,  not  to  add  to  or  to  take  away 
from  early  Christian  history,  and  not  to  solve 
the  problems  of  that  history,  but  simply  to 
expound  the  essence  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life,  and  the  relation  of  the  Christian  ideas 
to  the  real  world. 

vn 

This  preface  must  close  with  a  few  words 
of  acknowledgment  and  of  explanation. 

xxix 


I 


PREFACE 

In    1911    the   "President   and   Fellows   of 
Harvard  University"  -  a  body  which  is  also 
known  as  "The  Corporation  "-appointed  me, 
for   three   years,   holder   of   the   endowment 
known    as    "The    Cabot    Fellowship,      with 
the  understanding  that  I  should  devote  some 
of  my  time  to  study  and  research.     In  the 
beginning  of  1912,  when  my  work  was   for  a 
brief  period,  interrupted,  the  Harvard  Cor- 
poration put  me  under  an  additional  obhga- 
tion,  by  granting  me  an  extraordinary  leave 
of  absence.     Since  then,  I  have  been  allowed 
the    opportunity    not    only    to    write    these 
lectures,  but  to  accept  an  offer  made  in  the 
summer   of    1912    by    the    Trustees    of  the 
"Hibbert  Foundation"  to  deliver  this  entire 
course  on   "The   Problem    of    Christiamty 
at  Manchester   College,   Oxford;    while  the 
added   generosity  of  President  Lowell,  who 
also  acted,  in  this  matter,  as  Trustee  of  the 
Lowell  Institute  in  Boston,  has  enabled  me 
to  deliver  the  first  part  of  the  course  (the 
discussions   contained   in   Volume   I   of   this 
book)   as  public  lectures  before   the  Lowell 
Institute  in  November  and  December  of  1912. 

XXX 


PREFACE 

At  Manchester  College,  on  the  "Hibbert 
Foundation,"  the  lectures  have  been  read 
between  January  13  and  March,  1913,  and 
have  thus  continued  throughout  the  whole 
of  one  Oxford  term. 

Seldom,  then,  has  a  student  of  philosophy 
been  so  much  indebted  to  official  and  to  per- 
sonal kindliness  for  the  chance  to  perform 
such  a  task.  I  have  heartily  to  thank  the 
persons  and  authorities  just  mentioned,  and 
to  insist  that,  under  such  conditions,  the 
faults  of  my  book  must  be  regarded  as 
wholly  my  own,  and  judged  sternly. 

Prominent  among  the  authors   who  have 
influenced  my  discussion  of  the  idea  of  Atone- 
ment is  the  late  Dr.  R.  C.  Moberly,  whose 
book  on  "Atonement  and  Personality"  also 
had  a  deep  effect  upon  my  treatment  of  the 
idea  of  the  Church.     To  Professor  Sanday's 
"  Christologies,  Ancient  and  Modern  "  I  owe 
a  great   debt.      Dinsmore's    "Atonement   in 
Literature   and    Art"  came   into   my   hands 
only    after    my    own    discussion    of    Atone- 
ment had    assumed   definitive   shape. 
Among  the  friendly  critics  who  have  aided 


PREFACE 


me  in  preparing  my  text,  I  ought  to  mention 
Professor    E.    C.    Moore,    Professor    James 
Jackson  Putnam,  and   Professor   George   H. 
Palmer  of  Harvard  University .   Professor  Law- 
rence   P.  Jacks  of  Manchester  College,  Ox- 
ford, has  helped  me,  from  the  beginning  of 
my  task,  in  ways  which  I  cannot  here  ac- 
knowledge in  any  adequate  fashion.     I  have 
also  to  acknowledge  the  assistance  of  Principal 
J.  Estlin  Carpenter,  of  Professor  Charles  M. 
Bakewell  of  Yale  University,  and  of  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  R.  C.  Cabot  of  Boston.     Dr.  J.  Loewen- 
berg  has   helped  me  not    only    with    stimu- 
lating   and    sometimes    decisively     effective 
criticism  of    my  lectures  as  they  grew,  but 
with   other    much-needed    aid    in    preparing 
this    book.      Time    would    quite  fail   me   to 
tell  of  the  numerous  other  friends,  both  at 
home  and  in  Oxford,  who  have  accompanied, 
encouraged,  and  assisted  my  efforts. 


JOSIAH  ROYCE. 


Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
AprU  13.  1913. 


xxxu 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 
VOLUME  I 

THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

LECTURE  I 

The  Problem  and  the  Method  i 

•        •        •        •        i 

LECTURE  n 
The  Idea  of  the  Universal  Community         .        .      47 

LECTURE  m 
The  Moral  Burden  of  the  Individual  .        .        .    107 

LECTURE  IV 
The  Realm  of  Grace jgj 

LECTURE  V 
Time  and  Guilt t^^ 

LECTURE  VI 

Atonement ^69 

xxxiii 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 


LECTURE  Vn 


The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Lite    . 


PAOX 

.    825 


LECTURE  Vni 

The  Modern  Mind  and  the  Christian  Ideas        .    381 


xxxiv 


US  .:^»::5&-i:wir 


INTRODUCTION 

WHEN  these  lectures  were  delivered  at 
Manchester  College,  Oxford,  the  hear- 
ers were  supplied  with  the  following  outline 
under  the  general  title:  "Plan  of  Lectures 
on  the  Problem  of  Christianity."  This  plan 
is  here  repeated  with  its  headings  as  they 
appeared  on  this  printed  programme. 

PRELIMINARY  NOTE 

These  lectures  are  divided  into  two  parts  : 
Part  I  (Lectures  I-VIII),  on  "The  Christian 
Doctrine  of  Life";  Part  II  (Lectures  IX- 
XVI),  on  "The  Real  World  and  the  Chris- 
tian Ideas." 

Part  I  is  a  study  of  the  human  and  empirical 
aspect  of  some  of  the  leading  and  essential 
ideas  of  Christianity.  Part  II  deals  with  the 
technically  metaphysical  problems  to  which 
these  ideas  give  rise.  Parts  I  and  II  are 
contrasted  in  their  methods,  the  first  part 
discussing  religious  experience,  the  second 
part  dealing  with  its  metaphysical  foundations. 

XXXV 


INTRODUCTION 

The  two  parts,  however,  are  closely  connected 
in  their  purpose ;  and  at  the  close,  in  Lectures 
XV  and  XVI,  the  relations  between  the  meta- 
physical and  the  empirical  aspects  of  the  w  hole 
undertaking  are  reviewed. 

The  ''Christian  Ideas"  which  the  lecturer 
proposes  to  treat  as  "leading  and  essential' ^ 
are:  (1)  The  Idea  of  the  '* Community" 
(historically  represented  by  the  Church) ; 
(2)  The  Idea  of  the  ''Lost  State  of  the  Nat- 
ural Man";  (3)  The  Idea  of  "Atonement," 
together  with  the  somewhat  more  general 
Idea  of  "Saving  Grace." 

Each  of  these  ideas  is,  for  the  purposes  of 
these  lectures,  to  be  generalized  as  well  as 
interpreted.  The  "Community"  exists,  in 
human  history,  in  countless  different  forms 
and  grades,  of  which  the  visible  and  historical  j 
Christian  Church  is  one  instance.  The  ideal 
community  in  which,  according  to  Christian 
doctrine,  the  Divine  Spirit  finds  its  expression, 
presents  a  problem  which  cannot  be  ade- 
quately treated  without  considering  whether 
the  whole  universe  is  or  is  not,  in  some  sense, 
both  a  community,  and  a  divine  being.  The 
"lost  state  of  the  natural  man"  is  a  doctrine 
dependent  upon  the  views  about  the  nature 

xxxvi 


INTRODUCTION 

of  human  individuality  which  are  most  char- 
acteristic of  the  Christian  spirit. 

Christianity    has    always    been    a    religion, 
not  only  of  Love,  but  of  Loyalty.     By  loyalty  i 
is  meant  the  thoroughgoing  and  loving  devo-  ' 
tion  of  an  individual  to  a  community.     The 
''morally  detached"  individual,  who  has  not 
found  the  community  to  which  to  be  loyal,  or 
who,  having  first  found  that  community,  has 
lost  his  relation  to  it  through  an  act  of  deliber- 
ate disloyalty,  is  (according  to  such  a  religion) 
wholly  unable,  through  any  further  individ- 
ual deed  of  his  own,  to  win  or  to  regain  the 
true  goal  of  life.     The  ideas  of  "grace"  and 
of  "atonement"  have  to  do  with  the  question 
regarding  the  way  in  which  the  individual, 
whom  no  deed  of  his  own  (according  to  this 
religious  view)  can  save  or  restore,  can,  never- 
theless,  be  saved  through   a  deed   ''not   his 
own"  —  a    deed    which    the    community    or 
which  a  servant  of  the  community  in  whom 
its  Spirit  "fully  dwells,"  may  accomplish  on 
behalf  of  the  lost  individual.     In  this  fashion 
it  is  possible  to  indicate  how  our  three  Chris- 
tian ideas  may  be  and  should  be  generalized 
for  the  purpose  of  the  present  lectures. 

These  three  Christian  ideas  —  that  of  the 

XXX  vii 


ity. 


INTRODUCTION 

Community,  of  the  Lost  Individual,  and  of 
Atonement  —  have  a  close  relation  to  a  doc- 
trine of  life,  which,  when  duly  generalized,  can 
be  at  least  in  part  studied  as  a  purely  human 
*' Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  and  can  be  esti- 
mated in  empirical  terms,  apart  from  any  use 
of  technical  dogmas,  and  apart  from  any  meta- 
physical opinion.  The  "Community"  is  the 
object  to  which  loyalty  is  due.  The  "Lost 
State"  is  the  state  of  those  who  have  never 
found,  or  who,  once  finding,  have  then  lost 
their  loyalty.  "Atonement"  and  "Divine 
Grace"  may  be  considered  as  if  they  were 
expressions  of  the  purely  human  process 
whereby  the  community  seeks  and  saves, 
through  its  suffering  servants  and  its  Spirit, 
that  which  is  lost. 

Nevertheless,  no  purely  empirical  study  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  can,  by  itself, 
suffice  to  answer  our  main  questions.  It  is 
indeed  necessary  to  consider  the  basis  in 
human  nature  which  the  religion  of  loyalty 
possesses,  and  to  portray  the  relation  of  this 
religion  to  the  social  experience  of  mankind; 
and  to  this  task  the  first  part  of  these  lectures 
is  confined.  But  such  a  preliminary  study 
sends  us  beyond  itself. 

xxxviii 


INTRODUCTION 

For  each  of  the  Christian  ideas  demands  a 
further  interpretation  in  terms  of  a  theory  of 
the  real  world.  Religion  can  be  experienced 
and  lived  apart  from  metaphysics;  but  (if 
we  adapt  Anselm's  well-known  use  of  a  Scrip- 
tural word)  we  may  say  that  whoever  has 
learned  what  it  is  to  "do  the  will"  of  the  loyal 
spirit  has  a  right  to  endeavor  to  "know  the 
doctrine"  which  shall  teach  whether,  and  in 
what  sense,  the  Spirit,  the  Community,  and 
the  process  of  salvation  are  genuine  realities, 
transcending  any  of  their  human  embodiments. 

The  task  of  the  second  part  of  these  lectures 
is  therefore  to  consider  the  neglected  philo- 
sophical problem  of  the  sense  in  which  the 
community  and  its  Spirit  are  realities.  For 
this  purpose  a  somewhat  new  form  of  Ideal- 
ism, and,  in  particular,  a  new  chapter  in  the 
theory  of  knowledge  must  be  studied. 

TOPICS  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  LECTURES 

PART  I.  — THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF 

LIFE 

Lecture  I.  —  The  Problem  and  the  Method 

The  "Problem  of  Christianity"  stated.     The 
creed  of  the  "modern  man."    The  modern  man 

xxxix 


i\ 


INTRODUCTION 

and  the  "education  of  the  human  race."  The 
methods  to  be  employed  in  this  study.  Question  : 
"In  what  sense,  if  in  any,  does  the  Divine  Spirit 
dwell  in  the  Church?"  First  glimpses  of  the 
course  of  the  inquiry. 

Lecture   II.  —  The   Idea   of   the   Universal 

Community 

Tragic  fortunes  of  great  ideals  especially  exem- 
plified by  the  history  of  the  ideal  of  the  Church. 
The  conflict  of  spirit  and  letter.  The  basis  of 
loyalty  in  human  nature.  The  ideal  of  loyalty 
in  its  non-Christian  forms.  The  Pauline  develop- 
ment and  transformation  of  the  original  doctrine 
of  Christian  love  through  the  doctrine  of  charity 
in  its  relation  to  the  Christian  community. 

Lecture  III.  —  The  Moral  Burden   of  the 

Individual 

Social  aspects  of  the  doctrine  which  is  stated  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 
"The  Law"  as  a  factor  in  the  development  of 
Self-consciousness.  The  natural  and  social  culti- 
vation of  the  conscience  as  a  training  in  self-will. 
Modern  illustrations  of  the  process  which  was 
first  observed  by  the  Apostle.  Individualism  and 
collectivism.  The  community  of  hate  and  the 
community  of  love.     The  burden  of  the  individual 


INTRODUCTION 

and  the  escape  through  the  spirit  of  loyalty.    The 
"new  creature." 

Lecture  IV.  -  The  Realm  of  Grace 

A  further  view  of  Christianity,  as  a  Religion  of 
^y'*"^-     Loyalty  in  its  nat.Tal  »r;p.  „„,.  ;„  j^- 
^enumely  spiritu,!   forms.     The  .lo.t.i,,.  ,f  ^^„ 
two  levels     of  hi.m«n  nnt.,.^      The  problem  of 
the  origm  of  the  "beloved  community"  and  of  the 
begmnings  of  a  "life  in  the  spirit."     Relations  of 
Chnstian  loyalty  to  the  origins  of  Christian  dogma 
The  Spmt  in  the  Community,  and  the  personal 
bpirit  of  the  Community.     The  Founder  and  the 
problem  of  the  "two  natures."    The  "two   na 
tures"and  the  "two  levels."  Illustration  from  the 
Fourth  Gospel. 

Lecture  V.  —  Time  and  Guilt 

Matthew  Arnold  on  Puritanism  and  on  "getting 
nd  of  sin."     Conflicts  between  the  modern  spirit 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  "endless  penalty"  of  sin 
Reconsideration  of  these  conflicts.     The  rational 
theory  of  thenatureof"mortalsin."     The  relation 
of  our  acts  to  the   whole   time-process.     Every 
deed  IS  irrevocable.     Consequence  in  case  of  the 
deliberately  disloyal  deed.     Repentance  no   ade- 
quate remedy  for  guilt.     Inability  of  the  traitor 
to  atone  for  his  own  treason.     Thtf  rational  doc- 
trine of  "endless  penalty"  not   a   morbid,  or  a 


ijUUusuKummmiia^ 


INTRODUCTION 

cheerless,  or  an  arbitrary  doctrine.  Decisiveness 
of  character  and  rigidity  of  self-judgment.  "I 
was  my  own  destroyer  and  will  be  my  own  here- 
after,'* is  not  an  expression  of  weak  brooding,  but 
of  rational  self -estimate. 

Lecture  VI.  —  Atonement 

The  idea  of  Atonement  reviewed  with  reference 
to  the  "problem  of  the  traitor."  Typical  and 
symbolic  value  of  this  problem.  Conscience  and 
personal  freedom.  The  traitor's  own  self -estimate 
is  decisive  as  to  what  can  atone  for  his  guilt,  pro- 
vided only  that  he  is  completely  awakened  to  an 
insight  into  the  irrevocable  facts.  Inadequacy 
both  of  the  "penal-satisfaction"  theories  and  of 
the  so-called  "moral"  theories  of  Atonement. 
Need  of  an  objective  Atonement.  Neither  by 
arousing  repentance  nor  by  awakening  thankful- 
ness can  Atonement  be  accomplished.  State- 
ment of  an  objective  theory  of  Atonement  through 
the  deed  of  a  suffering  servant  of  the  community. 
Human  instances.  Universality  and  verifiability 
of  atoning  deeds.  In  them  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity culminates. 

Lecture  VII.  —  The  Christian  Doctrine  of 

Life 

Contrast  between  Buddhism  and  Christianity. 
Synthesis  of  the  Christian  ideas.     Resulting  esti- 

xlii 


INTRODUCTION 

mate  of  human  life  and  rule  for  the  service  and 
conduct  of  the  Community.     The  Christian  Will. 

Lecture  VIII.  -  The  Modern  Mind  and  the 

Christian  Ideas 

Human  conditions  of  the  survival  of  Christianity 
as  a  faith  "upon  earth."  The  social  prospects  of 
the  near  and  remote  future.  The  power  of  the 
Christian  Ideas.  Relations  of  the  foregoing  study 
to  traditional  Christianity. 

PABT  II. -THE  REAL  WORLD  AND  THE 
CHRISTIAN   IDEAS 

Lecture  IX.  —  The  Community  and  the  Time- 
Process 

The  neglected  article  in  Christian  theology,  and 
the  problem  of  the  metaphysics  of  the  community 
Social  "pluralism,"  and  "the  compounding  of  con- 
sciousness." The  doctrine  of  the  community  not 
mystical.  The  time-process  as  essential  to  the 
existence  of  the  community.  Communities  of 
"hope"  and  of  "memory." 

Lecture  X.  -  The   Body  and  the   Members 

The  Pauline  use  of  the  resurrection  as  a  means 
of  clarifying  the  consciousness  of  the  community. 
Modern  analogies ;   communities  of  cooperation ; 

xliii 


INTRODUCTION 

conditions    upon    which    loyalty    depends.     The 
community  as  an  interpretation. 

Lecture  XI.  —  Perception,    Conception,  and 

Interpretation 

The  theory  of  knowledge  has  been  dominated 
in  the  past  by  the  contrast  between  Perception 
and  Conception.  Need  of  the  recognition  of  a 
third  cognitive  process.  Charles  Peirce's  doc- 
trine  of  Interpretation  as  a  third  and  a  triadic 
cbgnltive  process,  essentially  social  in  its  type. 
Criticism  of  Bergson's  view  of  the  ideal  of  knowl- 
edge. Interpretation,  and  the  Metaphysics  of 
the  time-process. 

Lecture    XII.  —  The  Will  to  Interpret 
Interpretation  in  its  relation  to  Charles  Peirce's 
triadic  type  of  "Comparison."     Comparison  and 

under  individllpl  ^^^^  sopial  mndi- 
Lions.  Definition  of  a  "  Community  of  Interpreta- 
tTion?^  Ideal  value  of  such  a  community.  Its 
form  as  the  principal  form  which  the  "life  of  the 
spirit"  assumes.  Examples,  and  generalization 
of  the   ideals   involved. 

Lecture  XIII.  —  The  World  of  Interpreta- 
tion 

Outline  of  a  form  of  idealism  determined  by  the 
use  of  Peirce's  definition  of  the  cognitive  process 

xliv 


INTRODUCTION 

of  interpretation.  Relation  to  Bergson  and  to 
^^^^^-  The  world  as  a  "Community  of  Interpre- 
tation."  The  One  and  the  Many  in  such  a  world. 
The  relation  of  interpretation  to  Time.  Thesis : 
** The  universe  contains  its  own  interpreter."  The 
world  of  interpretation  as  not  "  static."  Resulting 
general  doctrine  as  to  the  nature  and  the  unity 
of  the  "Spirit  of  theCommunitv.*' 

Lecture  XIV.  —  The  Doctrine  of  Signs 

Definition  of  Peirce's  term  "Sign."  The  Signs 
as  a  third  and  triadic  category,  corresponding  to 
the  cognitive  process  of  interpretation.  The 
Doctrine  of  Signs  in  its  relation  to  "Radical 
Empiricism,"  and  to  Pragmatism.  The  primacy 
of  the  social  consciousness.  Loyalty  as  the  loving 
aspect  of  the  "will  to  interpret."  The  meta- 
physics of  the  saving  process.  The  irrevocable 
and  the  temporal. 


Lecture  XV.  —  The  Historical  and  the 

Essential 

The  relation  of  this  form  of  idealism  to  tradi- 
tional Christianity.  Pauline  Christianity  and 
our  doctrine  of  interpretation.  Final  statement 
of  our  "Problem  of  Christianity." 

xlv 


INTRODUCTION 

Lecture  XVI.  —  Summary  and  Conclusion 

Teleology  and  Induction.  The  larger  teleolog- 
ical  aspects  of  the  natural  world.  The  Church 
and  the  sects;  the  Church  and  the  world;  the 
future  possibilities  for  religious  development. 
Practical  results  of  the  inquiry. 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 


xlvi 


LECTURE  I 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

X  PROPOSE,  in  the  course  of  these  lec- 
-■-  tures,  to  expound  and  to  defend  certain 
theses  regarding  the  vital  and  essential  char- 
acteristics of  the  Christian  religion.  In  the 
present  lecture,  which  must  be  wholly  con- 
fined to  the  work  of  preparing  the  way  for 
the  later  discussion,  I  shall  first  briefly  ex- 
plain my  title,  and  shall  state  what  I  mean 
by  "The  Problem  of  Christianity."  Then 
I  shall  name  certain  aspects  of  this  problem 
which  will  determine  the  whole  course  of  our 
inquiry;  and  I  shall  indicate  the  nature  of 
the  method  which  I  intend  to  follow.  Since 
our  topic  is  so  wealthy  and  so  complex,  I 
must  begin  by  means  of  very  general  and 
summary  statements,  and  must  leave  to 
later  lectures  any  effort  to  deal  with  the  de- 
tails of  the  matters  that  I  shall  try  to  treat. 

Before  all  else,  let  me  say  one  word  as  to 
the  general   spirit   in   which   I   venture  into 

3 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

this  so  familiar,  yet  so  mysterious  and  mo- 
mentous, department  of  the  philosophy  of 
religion. 

I 

The  present  day  is  one  marked  by  a  new 
awakening  of  interest  in  religious  experience, 
and  in  its  bearing  upon  life.  This  interest 
finds  expression  both  in  general  literature 
and  in  philosophical  discussion.  I  myself 
have  to  approach  all  such  topics  with  the 
interests  and  the  habits,  not  only  of  a  student 
of  philosophy,  but  of  one  already  committed 
to  a  certain  type  of  philosophical  opinions. 
This  fact  sets  inevitable  limits  to  the  sort 
of  contribution  that  I  can  make  to  the  in- 
quiry which  my  title  names.  Yet  the  nov- 
elty of  the  present  situation  of  human 
thought,  and  the  dramatic  interest  of  certain 
crises  through  which  opinion  has  recently 
been  passing,  give  to  even  the  least  construc- 
tive of  philosophical  students  numerous  op- 
portunities to  experience,  in  the  world  of 
religious  inquiry,  what  men  were  never  per- 
mitted to  experience  before.     The  philosoph- 


THE    PROBLEM    AND    THE    METHOD 

ical  thought  of  our  day  is  affected  by  new  mo- 
tives; and  the  religious  life  of  the  world  is 
deepened  by  the  presence  of  efforts  which 
are  due  to  the  novel  and  far-reaching  social 
and  moral  problems  of  our  time.  All  these 
varied  influences  react  upon  one  another. 
The  student  of  philosophy  may  well  feel 
himself  moved,  .  by  recent  discussions,  to 
formulate  opinions  which  the  novelty  of  the 
life  of  other  men  may  haply  color,  even  when 
the  one  who  formulates  them  has  no  power, 
derived  from  his  own  inner  resources,  to 
invent. 

At  all  events,  any  sincere  seeker  for  truth 
may  hope  that,  however  remote  from  his 
own  powers  it  may  be  either  to  speak  with 
tongues  or  to  prophesy,  he  may  gain  new 
edification  from  his  brethren,  and  may,  in 
his  turn,  help  others  to  share  in  the  gifts  of 
the  spirit,  and  to  be  renewed  and  informed  by 
some  power  which  is  not  ourselves,  and  which 
seems,  in  this  happy  moment,  to  be  coming 
into  a  close  touch  with  the  deeper  thought 
and  the  better  aspiration  of  our  time, 

6 


THE    PROBLEM     OF    CHRISTIANITY 

With  such  a  "trembling  hope,"  —  with 
such  a  hope  to  gain  some  advantage  from  the 
philosophical  as  well  as  from  the  religious 
movement  of  our  times,  —  I  myself  have 
for  a  good  while  endeavored  to  reconsider 
some  of  the  ancient  and  modern  problems  of 
the  philosophy  of  religion.  These  lectures 
will  embody  the  results  of  a  few  of  these  efforts 
towards  reconsideration.  Since  I  know  that 
so  many  other  inquirers  are  engaged  in  analo- 
gous tasks,  and  since  I  feel  sure  that  unity  of 
opinion  regarding  the  office  and  the  mean- 
ing of  religion  can  only  be  approached  through 
a  variety  of  efforts,  I  am  sure  that  my  own 
venture  is  no  mere  outcome  of  lonely  pre- 
sumption. 

II 

The  man  who  considers  the  interests  of 
religion  may  choose  any  one  of  three  atti- 
tudes toward  Christianity.  The  first  is  the 
familiar  attitude  of  the  expounder  and  de- 
fender of  some  form  of  the  Christian  faith, 
—  the  position  of  the  apologist  and  of  the 
Christian  teacher.     Even  this   one   mode   of 

6 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

dealing  with  the  tradition  of  Christianity  is 
capable  of  an  almost  endless  wealth  of  varia- 
tions. The  defender  of  the  faith  may  adhere  to 
this  or  to  that  branch  of  the  Christian  church. 
Or  perhaps  he  may  regard  tradition  from  the 
point  of  view  which  is  often  called  that  of 
modern  Liberal  Christianity.  Or  —  what- 
ever his  own  creed  may  be  —  he  may  lay 
the  principal  stress  upon  some  practical  task, 
such  as  that  of  a  pastor  or  of  a  missionary. 
In  yet  another  spirit,  he  may  emphasize 
technical  theological  questions.  Finally,  he 
may  make  the  history  of  the  church  or  of  the 
religion  his  main  interest.  Through  all  such 
variations,  as  they  appear  in  the  words  and 
the  hearing  of  religious  inquirers  and  teachers, 
there  mav  run  a  tendencv  that  unifies,  and 
so  characterizes  them  all,  —  the  positive  ten- 
dency, namely,  to  defend,  to  propagate,  and, 
in  one  way  or  another,  to  render  efficacious 
the  Christian  view  of  God,  of  the  world,  and 
of  human  destiny. 

Secondly,  however,  the  inquirer  who  deals 
with  religious  problems  may  take  the  position 

7 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  the  opponent  or  of  the  critic  of  Christianity, 
or  may  simply  regard  Christianity  with  a 
relative,  although  deliberately  thoughtful,  in- 
difference. Such  an  opponent,  or  such  an 
external  critical  observer  of  the  Christian 
world,  may  be  a  representative  of  some  other 
faith,  as  certain  of  the  recent  Oriental  critics 
of  Christian  doctrine  have  been ;  or,  in  other 
cases,  he  may  emphasize  some  aspect  of  the 
supposed  conflict  between  the  spirit  and 
the  results  of  modern  science,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  tradition  or  the  faith  of  Chris- 
tendom on  the  other.  At  a  very  recent  time 
in  the  history  of  European  discussion,  such 
attitudes  of  critical  hostility  or  of  thoughtful 
indifference  towards  Christianity  were  promi- 
nent factors  in  discussion,  and  occupied  a 
favored  place  in  the  public  mind.  Such  was 
the  case,  for  instance,  in  the  last  century, 
during  the  early  phases  of  the  controversies 
regarding  evolution,  especially  in  the  years 
between  1860  and  1880.  As  a  philosophical 
student  I  myself  was  trained  under  the 
influence  of  such  a  general  trend  of  public 

8 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

opinion.  These  attitudes  of  critical  indiffer- 
ence or  of  philosophical  hostility  towards  tradi- 
tional faith,  are  still  prominent  in  our  world 
of  religious  discussion ;  but  side  by  side  with 
them  there  have  recently  become  prominent 
tendencies  belonging  to  a  third  group,  — 
tendencies  which  seem  to  me  to  be,  in  their 
treatment  of  Christianity,  neither  predomi- 
nantly apologetic  nor  predominantly  hostile, 
nor  yet  at  all  indifferent.  This  third  group 
of  tendencies  has  suggested  to  me  the  title 
of  these  lectures.  I  wish  briefly  to  charac- 
terize this  group  of  ways  of  dealing  with 
Christianity,  and  to  indicate  its  contrast 
with  the  other  groups. 

Ill 

The  modern  student  of  the  problems  of 
religion  in  general,  or  of  Christianity  in  par- 
ticular, may  see  good  reason  for  agreeing  with 
the  apologists,  —  with  the  defenders  of  the 
faith,  —  in  attributing  to  Christianity,  viewed 
simply  as  a  product  of  human  evolution,  a 
central  importance  in  history,  in  the  religious 


) 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

experience  of  our  race,  and  in  the  endlessly 
renewed,  yet  very  ancient,  endeavor  of  man- 
kind to  bring  to  pass,  or  to  move  towards, 
the  salvation  of  man.  To  such  a  student  it 
may  have  become  clear :  —  first,  that  what- 
ever the  truth  of  religion  may  be,  the  office, 
the  task,  the  need  of  religion  are  the  most 
important  of  the  needs,  the  tasks,  the  offices 
of  humanity ;  and,  secondly,  that  both  by 
reason  of  its  past  history  and  by  reason  of  its 
present  and  persistent  relation  to  the  religious 
experience  and  to  the  needs  of  men,  Chris- 
tianity stands  before  us  as  the  most  effective 
expression  of  religious  longing  which  the 
human  race,  travailing  in  pain  until  now,  has, 
in  its  corporate  capacity,  as  yet,  been  able 
to  bring  before  its  imagination  as  a  vision, 
or  has  endeavored  to  translate,  by  the  labor 
of  love,  into  the  terms  of  its  own  real  life. 

In  view  of  these  opinions,  such  a  student 
of  religion  may  tend  to  disagree  with  that 
spirit  of  critical  indifference  or  of  hostility 
towards  Christianity  which  has  characterized, 
and  still  characterizes,  one  of  the  two  groups 

10 


/ 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

of    rehgious    inquirers    whom    I    have    just 
mentioned.     With  the  apologists,  then,  and 
against  the  hostile  or  the  thoughtfully  indif- 
ferent critics  of  Christianity,  such  a  student 
may  stand,  as  one  to  whom  the  philosophy  of 
religion,  if  there  is  to  be  a  philosophy  of  reli- 
gion at  all,  must  include  in  its  task  the  office 
of  a  positive  and  of  a  deeply  sympathetic 
interpretation   of   the   spirit  of   Christianity, 
and  must  be  just  to  the  fact  that  the  Chris- 
tian religion  is,  thus  far  at  least,  man's  most 
impressive  vision  of  salvation,  and  his  prin- 
cipal glimpse  of  the  home- land  of  the  spirit. 
Yet  such  a  student  may  still  see,  for  rea- 
sons which  I  need  not  at  the  outset  of  our 
quest    fully   state,    how  numerous    are    the 
questions  yet  to  be  answered,  the  reasonable 
doubts  yet  to  be  removed,  the  philosophical 
issues  yet  to  be  met,  the  historical  problems 
yet   to  be  solved,  the  tragedies  of  practical 
and  of  religious  life  yet  to  be  overcome,  the 
divisions  of  human  faith  yet  to  be  reunited, 
before  it  can  become  quite  clear  to  us,  if  it 
ever  is  to  become  clear,  just  what  ones  amongst 

11 


J 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  apologists  are  indeed  defending  the  true 
Christian  faith,  and  wherein  the  truth  of 
that  faith,  if  it  be  true,  consists,  and  what  the 
essence  of  Christianity  is,  and  in  what  form, 
if  in  any  form,  Christianity  is  destined  to 
win  over  to  itself,  if  it  is  ever  to  win,  that 
troubled  human  world  which  it  has  illumined, 
but  whereto  it  has  thus  far  brought,  not  peace, 
but  a  sword. 

For  such  a  student,  who  is  neither  predomi- 
nantly an  apologist,  nor,  in  the  main,  any 
hostile  or  indifferent  critic,  the  topic  to  be 
chiefly  considered  in  his  own  reflections  con- 
cerning the  Christian  religion  would  be  ex- 
plicitly "The  Problem  of  Christianity." 

That  is,  such  a  student  would  approach 
this  reUgion  regarding  it,  at  least  provision- 
ally, not  as  the  one  true  faith  to  be  taught, 
and  not  as  an  outworn  tradition  to  be  treated 
with  an  enlightened  indifference,  but  as  a 
central,  as  an  intensely  interesting,  life-prob- 
lem of  humanity,  to  be  appreciated,  to  be 
interpreted,  to  be  thoughtfully  reviewed,  with 
the  seriousness  and  with  the  striving  for  rea- 

12 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

sonableness  and  for  thoroughness  which  we 
owe  to  every  life-problem  wherewith  human 
destiny  is  inseparably  interwoven. 

Such  is  the  mode  of  approach  to  the  study 
of  Christianity  which  these  lectures  will 
adopt.  This  mode  of  approach  is  in  no  w^se 
new,  but  it  is  the  one  which,  at  the  present 
moment,  in  my  opinion,  the  thoughtful  public 
of  our  day  both  most  desires  and  most  deeply 
needs.  And  despite  all  that  has  been  already 
done,  and  well  done,  in  the  direction  of  the 
sympathetic  philosophical  interpretation  of 
Christianity,  there  is  still  ample  work  yet  to 
do  to  make  this  third  mode  of  approach  to 
our  topic  more  effective  for  the  clarifying 
of  men's  insight  and  for  the  strengthening 
of  the  great  common   religious   interests. 

IV 

If  you  ask  in  what  way  our  problem  of 
Christianity  can  be,  at  this  stage,  provision- 
ally formulated,  I  may  give  you,  in  reply,  a 
first  glimpse  both  of  the  topics  that  we  are 
to  discuss,  and  of  the  general  method  to  be 

13 


ilV 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

used  in  their  discussion,  by  employing  for  the 
moment  a  dehberately  inadequate  expression. 

What  I  am  minded  to  consider  in  these 
lectures  includes  some  part  of  an  answer  to 
the  question:  "In  what  sense,  if  in  any, 
I  can  the  modern  man  consistently  be,  in  creed, 
a  Christian?"  This  form  of  statement  indi- 
cates' what  is  at  issue,  but  calls  in  a  most 
obvious  way  for  a  more  exact  definition  of 
our  plan.  Yet  the  ver^^  vagueness  of  the 
outlook  which  these  words  suggest  will  help 
us  to  advance  almost  at  once  to  a  more  definite 
view  of  our  task. 

**In  what  sense  can  the  modern  man  con- 
sistently be,  in  creed,  a  Christian?"  You 
see,  in  any  case,  that  we  are  to  speak  of  some 
sort  of  creed,  and  of  the  consistency  with 
which  somebody  may  or  may  not  hold  that 
creed.  In  other  words,  our  own  "problem 
of  Christianity,"  in  these  lectures,  is  to  be 
one  that,  at  least  in  part,  has  to  do  with  the 
reasonable  consistency  of  certain  possible  reli- 
"  gious  opinions.  That  is,  we  are  to  study  our 
topic  as  students  of  philosophy   view  their 


14 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

issues.  Our  problem  is,  in  itself  considered, 
and  apart  from  the  limitations  of  our  own 
mode  of  inquiry,  a  life-problem,  an  intensely 
practical,  a  passionately  interesting,  issue,  the 
problem  and  the  issue  of  a  reHgion.  But  we 
are  to  approach  this  problem  reflectively,  and 
are  to  take  account  of  interests  that  are 
not  only  those  of  religion,  but  also  those  of 
thought. 

Herein  lies  one  chosen  limitation  of  our 
enterprise,  in  that  we  are  not  undertaking  to 
contribute  directly  to  religion  itself,  but  only 
to  an  understanding  of  some  of  the  problems 
which  religious  creeds  suggest.  In  so  far, 
then,  vague  as  this  first  statement  of  our 
problem  is,  the  word  "creed,"  and  the  ^ 
reference  to  the  creed  of  the  "modern  ^ 
man,"  serve  to  specify  in  some  measure 
the  range  of  our  investigation.  As  a  fact, 
I  shall  summarily  study  in  these  lectures  cer- 
tain aspects  of  the  traditional  creed  of  the 
Christian  Church. 

On    the    other    hand,    the    term    "modern 
man,"  as  just  used  in  my  provisional  state- 

15 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

merit  of  our  problem,  has  a  meaning  whose 
deeper  relation  to  our  task  we  shall  hardly 
be  able  to  appreciate  justly  until  the  very 
close  of  this  series  of  studies.  "Can  the 
modern  man  consistently  hold  a  Christian 
creed?"  But  who,  you  will  ask,  is  this 
modern  man  ? 

Superficially  regarded,  the  conception  of 
the  "modern  man"  is  one  of  the  most  arbi- 
trary of  the  convenient  fictions  of  current 
discussion.  What  views  or  types  of  views 
are,  or  ought  to  be,  characteristic  of  the 
"modern  man"  hardly  any  of  us  will  wholly 
agree  in  defining.  And  if  there  is  any  typical 
"modern  man,"  he  would  seem,  at  first  sight, 
to  be  a  creature  of  a  day.  To-morrow  some 
other  sort  of  modern  man  must  take  his 
place.  And  of  the  modern  man  of  a  future 
century  we  now  cannot  even  know  the  race, 
— much  less,  it  would  seem,  the  religious  creed. 
What  creed  about  religion,  Christian  or  non- 
Christian,  now  befits  the  creature  of  a  day 
w^hom  our  own  young  century  calls  the  rnodern 
man,  —  why  need  we  inquire  ?     So  you  might 

16 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

comment  upon  the  statement  of  our  problem 
which  I  have  just  put  into  words. 

Yet  even  at  this  stage  of  the  discussion,  if 
you  consider  for  a  moment  the  meaning  that 
underlies  the  so  frequent  use  of  the  phrase 
"modern   man"   in   current   discussion,   and 
that  inspires  our  familiar  interest  in  the  sup- 
posed views  of  the  fictitious  being  called  the 
"modern  man,"  you  will  see  that  even  this 
provisional  mode  of  formulating  the  problem 
of  Christianity  may,  after  all,  guide  us  to  a 
study  of  matters  which  are  not  fictitious  and 
which  have  a  bearing  on  permanent  religious 
concerns. 

For  by  the  "modem  man"  most  of  us  mean  . 
a  being  whose  views  are  supposed  to  be  in 
some  sense  not  only  the  historical  result,  but 
a  significant  summary,  of  what  the  ages  have 
taught  mankind.  The  term  "modem  man" 
condenses  into  a  word  the  hypothesis,  the 
postulate,  that  the  human  race  has  been  sub- 
ject to  some  more  or  less  coherent  process  of 
education.  The  modern  man  is  supposed  to 
teach   what  this   "education  of  the  human 

c  17 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

race"  has  taught  to  him.  The  ages  have 
their  lesson.  The  modern  man  knows  some- 
thing of  this  lesson. 

Such,  I  say,  is  the  hypothesis,  or  postulate, 
which  makes  the  phrase  "modern  man"  so 
attractive.  This  hypothesis,  this  postulate, 
may  be  true  or  false.  But  at  all  events  its 
meaning  is  deep  and  is  connected  with  a  cer- 
tain more  or  less  definite  view  of  human 
nature  and  of  the  course  of  time,  —  a  view 
which  has  played  its  own  part  in  the  history 
of  religion,  and  which,  in  particular,  has  well- 
known  relations  to  Christian  belief. 

We  all  remember  that  the  apostle  Paul 
conceived  human  history  as  including  a  pro- 
cess of  education.  As  "modern  man"  of 
his  own  time,  the  apostle  conceived  himself 
to  have  become  able  to  read  the  lesson  of 
this  process.  But  such  a  postulate,  whether 
true  or  false,  whether  asserted  in  Paul's  time 
or  in  our  own,  whether  Christian  in  its  for- 
mulation or  not,  includes  a  doctrine  that  will 
later  occupy  a  large  place  in  our  inquiry,  — 
the  doctrine  that  the  human  race,  taken  as  a 

18 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

whole,  has  some  genuine  and  significant  spirit- 
ual unity,  so  that  its  life  is  no  mere  flow  and 
strife  of  opinions,  but  includes  a  growth  in 
genuine  insight. 

Our  customary  speech  about  the  modern 
man  implies  that,  in  the  light  of  this  common  \ 
insight  gradually  attained  by  the  whole  race, 
our  creeds  should  be  tested  and,  if  need  be, 
revised.    The  "modern  man,"  defined  in  terms 
of  such   an   hypothesis,  is   conceived   as   the 
present  minister  of  this  treasury  of  wisdom 
which  the  ages  have  stored  and  which  our 
progress  is  still  increasing.     But,  from  such 
a  point  of  view,  to  ask  whether  the  modern 
man  can  consistently  be  in  creed  a  Christian, 
is  the  same  as  to  ask  how  Christianity,  con- 
sidered as  a  body  of  religious  beliefs,  is  related 
to  the  whole  lesson  of  religious  history,  and 
how  far  this  supposed  education  of  the  human 
race  has  been,  and  remains,  in  spirit,  in  mean- 
ing,  in   its   true   interpretation,   a   Christian 
education. 

Only  at  the  close  of  our  entire  discussion 
shall  we  be  able  to  see  the  real  scope  of  this 

19 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

last  question,  and  its  deeper  relations  to  the 
problem  of  Christianity.  It  is  not  at  all 
my  intent  to  assume  at  this  stage  that  the 
postulate  just  stated  is  true,  namely,  the 
postulate  that  the  human  race  has  been  sub- 
ject to  some  genuine  process  of  education, 
that  the  ages  have  taught  man  some  more  or 
less  connected  lesson,  and  that  the  modern 
man  can  read  this  lesson.  This  first  provi- 
sional formulation  of  our  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity in  terms  of  the  relation  of  Christianity 
to  the  creed  of  the  modern  man,  is  intended 
to  direct  attention  at  once  to  two  aspects  of 
our  undertaking. 

First,  Christianity,  as  I  have  aheady  ( 
pointed  out,  is,  historically  speaking,  one 
great  result  of  the  efifort  of  mankind  to  find 
'  the  way  of  salvation,  and  is  apparently  thus 
far  the  most  impressive  and,  in  this  sense,  the 
greatest  result  of  this  very  effort.  Our  prob- 
lem of  Christianity  involves  some  attempt  to 
find  out  what  this  great  religion  most  essen- 
tially is  and  means,  what  its  most  permanent 
and    indispensable    features    are.     Secondly, 

20 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

our  problem  of  Christianity  is  the  problem 
of  estimating  these  most  permanent  and  indis- 
pensable features  of  Christianity  in  the  light 
of  what  we  can  learn  of  the  lesson  that  the 
religious  history  of  the  race,  viewed,  if  pos- 
sible, as  a  connected  whole,  has  taught  men. 
So  then,  to  state  our  problem  of  Christianity 
as  a  problem  about  whether  the  modern  man 
can  consistently  be,  in  creed,  a  Christian, 
is  to  use  language  that  seems  to  refer  to  the 
issues  of  the  passing  moment,  but  that  at 
once  leads  back  from  the  problem  of  the 
moment  to  the  problem  of  the  ages,  from  the 
modern  man  to  humanity  viewed  as  a  whole. 
More  carefully  restated,  then,  our  problem 
of  Christianity  is  this:  When  we  consider 
what  are  the  most  essential  features  of  Chris- 
tianity, is  the  acceptance  of  a  creed  that 
embodies  these  features  consistent  with  the 
lessons  that,  so  far  as  we  can  yet  learn,  the 
growth  of  human  wisdom  and  the  course  of 
the  ages  have  taught  man  regarding  religious 
truth  ? 

Our  problem  of  Christianity  is  intended  to 

2X 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

be,  as  now  appears,  a  synthesis  of  certain 
philosophical  and  of  certain  historical  prob- 
lems. The  Christian  religion  furnishes  the 
topic.  This  religion  is  an  outcome  of  a  long 
history  and  it  includes  a  doctrine  about  life 
and  about  the  world.  We  are  to  estimate  this 
doctrine,  partly  in  the  light  of  its  history, 
partly  in  the  light  of  a  philosophical  study  of 
the  meaning  and  lesson  of  this  history. 

V 

This  first  statement  of  our  problem  brings 
next  to  our  minds  what  is,  I  suppose,  the  most 
familiar  issue  which  any  one  has  to  meet  who 
undertakes  to  define  the  word  "  Christianity  " 
in  a  manner  suited  to  the  spirit  of  recent 
discussion.  This  issue  requires  here  a  brief 
preliminary  statement. 

Christianity  has  two  principal  and  contrast- 
ing characteristics.  It  is,  in  the  first  place, 
according  to  its  own  most  ancient  and  familiar 
tradition,  the  religion  which  was  taught  and 
was  first  lived  out,  by  an  individual  person, 
—  by   a  man  who  dwelt  among  men,   who 

22 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 


counselled  a  mode  of  living,  who  aroused  and 
expressed  a  certain  spirit,  and  who  taught 
that  in  this  spirit,  and  in  this  life,  the  way  of 
salvation  is  to  be  found  for  all  men.  This 
first  characteristic  of  Christianity  suggests  to 
all  of  us  a  view  regarding  our  problem  which 
has  been  very  greatly  emphasized  in  recent 
discussions  of  religion,  and  which  consists  in 
asserting  that,  however  deep  the  problem  of 
Christianity  may  be,  it  is,  in  its  essence,  an 
impressively  simple  problem. 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  the  grounds  of 
this  assertion.  They  are  well  known.  As  a 
religion  of  a  person,  appealing  to  persons 
regarding  the  goal  and  the  path  of  their  own 
lives,  Christianity  in  so  far  appears  as  an  art  u 
of  living,  as  a  counsel  for  the  attainment  of 
the  ends  of  human  existence.  Whatever 
may  be  your  opinions  or  your  doubts  about 
God  and  the  world  and  the  mysteries  of  our 
nature  and  our  destiny,  it  would  in  so  far 
seem  plausible  that,  as  a  modern  man,  you 
could  reasonably  estimate  both  the  Master 
and   his   reported    solution    of   the   practical 

23 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

problem  of  human  living,  and  that  you  could 
thus  decide  whether  or  no  you  can  be  in  creed 
a   Christian,   without   considering   any   very 
recondite   matter.       Your   decision,    "I    am 
in  creed  a  Christian,"  if,  as  a  modern  man, 
you  made  such  a  decision,  might  mean,  from 
this  point  of  view,  simply  this:    "I  find  that 
the  example  and  the  personal  inspiration  of 
Jesus  are  for  me  of  supreme  value ;    and  my 
experience  shows  me  that  the  Christian  plan 
of  life  promises  to  me,  and  to  those  of  like 
mind  with  me,  the  highest  spiritual  success." 
When    thus    defined,    Christianity    would 
mean  the  teaching,  the  personal  example,  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Master.     If  one's  personal 
experience  taught  one  that  this  teaching,  this 
example,  and  this  spirit  are,  from  one's  own 
point  of  view,  the  solution  for  the  problem  of 
human  life,  one  both  could  be,  and  would  be, 
in  this  sense  of  the  word,  in  creed  a  Chris- 
tian.    So  at  least  the  assertion  just  repeated 
teaches.     And   if  this  assertion  is  true,  our 
problem  is  essentially  a  simple  problem. 
So  far  I  have  merely  stated  a  well-known 

2»i 


«d«aaart,M,»AVi.ft|iB||g|i||^^ 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

opinion.  But  whoever  thus  attempts  to  sim- 
plify the  problem  of  Christianity,  can  do  so 
only  by  either  ignoring  or  else  minimizing  the 
significance  of  the  second  of  the  two  char- 
acteristics of  the  Christian  religion,  whose 
existence  I  have  just  mentioned.  Histori- 
cally speaking,  Christianity  has  never  ap- 
peared simply  as  the  religion  taught  by  the 
Master.  It  has  always  been  an  interpretation 
of  the  Master  and  of  his  religion  in  the  light 
of  some  doctrine  concerning  his  mission,  and 
also  concerning  God,  man,  and  man's  salva- 
tion, —  a  doctrine  which,  even  in  its  simplest 
expressions,  has  always  gone  beyond  what  the 
Master  himself  is  traditionally  reported  to 
have  taught  while  he  lived. 

Whatever  the  reason  why  the  Master  and  the 
interpretation  of  his  person  and  of  his  teach- 
ing have  come  to  be  thus  contrasted,  it  is 
necessary  at  once  to  call  attention  to  the 
historical  fact  that  such  an  interpretation  of 
the  Master,  of  his  person,  and  of  his  mission, 
always  has  existed  ever  since  there  was  any 
Christian  religion  at  all. 

25 


f 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  question  is   here   not   one   dependent 
upon  our  decision  as  to  the  trustworthiness 
or    the    authenticity    of    any    one    tradition. 
For  Christian  tradition,  in  all  its  forms,  has 
always  more  or  less  clearly  and  extensively 
distinguished  between  its  own  account  of  the 
Master,  of  his  sayings,  of  his  deeds,  of  his 
personal  character,  and  its  own  interpretation 
of  his  mission,  of  his  dignity,  and  of  the  divine 
purpose    that    his    life    accomplished.      The 
Master  himself  and  the  interpretation  of  his 
mission  have  thus  been  from  the  first  con- 
trasted.    And  they  have  been  contrasted  by 
the  very  tradition  to  which  we  owe  the  report 
of  both  of  them.     This  fact  stands  in  the  way 
of  all  such  attempts  to  simplify  our  problem 
as  is  the  attempt  which  I  have  just  outlined. 
To  mention  one  of  the  very  earliest  forms  of 
.  this  contrast  between  religion  as  taught  by 
the  Master  and  its  later  expression.     Tradi- 
tion   tells    us    about    sayings    in    which    the 
Master  set  forth  his  teaching.     It  also  tells 
us   of   his    fortunes, —  of   his    suffering    and 
death.     Now,  however  it  was  that  his  teach- 

26 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

ings  were  related  to  the  causes  that  brought 
about  his  sufferings  and  death,  any  account 
of  these  his  fortunes  inevitably  contains  some 
indication  of  the  reasons  why,  according  to 
tradition,  "it  was  needful  that  Christ  should 
suffer."  But  these  reasons,  as  tradition  states 
them,  have  always  included  some  account  of 
the  Master's  office  and  of  his  mission,  —  an 
account  which  has  gone  beyond  what,  during 
his  life,  tradition  views  as  having  become 
explicit  and  manifest  to  his  disciples.  While 
the  Master  lived,  these  and  these  (so  the 
reports  run)  were  his  teachings.  In  these 
and  these  deeds  he  manifested  his  person  and 
spirit.  But  only  after  he  had  suffered  and 
died,  and  —  as  was  early  reported  —  had  risen 
again,  did  there  become  manifest,  according 
to  tradition,  what,  during  his  earthly  life, 
could  not  become  plain  even  to  those  who  were 
nearest  to  him. 

Thus,  I  repeat,  tradition  reports  the  matter, 
and  thus  it  contrasts,  from  the  very  begin- 
nings of  Christian  history,  the  Master  to 
whom  this  teaching  is  attributed  and  the  inter- 

27 


I 


Mafiao^Haab. 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pretation  of  his  nature  and  mission,  which, 
according  to  the  same  tradition,  only  his 
sufferings,  his  death,  his  reported  resurrec- 
tion, and  the  coming  of  his  spirit  into  a  new 
unity  with  his  disciples,  could  begin  to  make 
manifest.  Thus  the  Master  and  the  inter- 
pretation early  began  to  be  distinguished. 
Thus  they  remain  distinguished  throughout 
Christian  history. 

And  thus,  for  the  fictitious  being  whom  I 
called   the   ''modem   man"  — for   him  also, 
in  case  he  chooses  to  consider  the  problem 
of  Christianity  at  all,  it  must  sooner  or  later 
become   manifest,   I   think,   that   he   cannot 
decide  whether  or  no  he  is  in  creed  a  Chris- 
tian,   without   reflecting    upon    his    attitude, 
both   towards  the   Master  and   towards  the 
interpretations  which  history  has  given  to  the 
mission  of  the  Master.     To  ignore,  or  even 
to  minimize,  the  importance  of  these  inter- 
pretations, to  suppose  that  Christianity  can 
be  viewed   simply,   or  even  mainly,   a^   the 
religion  taught  during  the  founder's  life  by 
the  Master  himself,  is,  I  think,  to  miss  the 

28 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

meaning  of  history  to  a  degree  unworthy  of 
the  highly  developed  historical  sense  which 
should  characterize  the  "modern  man." 

The  "modern  man"  may  have  to  decide, 
in  the  end,  that  he  is,  in  creed,  no  Christian 
at  all,  simply  because  he  may  have  to  reject 
some  or  all  of  the  interpretations  which  tra- 
dition has  asserted  to  be  true  of  the  mission 
and  of  the  divine  relations  of  the  Master. 
But  the  modern  man  will  be  unable,  in  my 
opinion,  to  be  just  to  his  own  historical  sense 
and  to  the  genuine  history  of  Christianity, 
unless  he  sees  that  the  Christian  religion 
always  has  been  and,  historically  speaking, 
must  be,  not  simply  a  religion  taught  by  any 
man  to  any  company  of  disciples,  but  always 
also  a  religion  whose  sense  has  consisted,  at 
least  in  part,  in  the  interpretation  which  later 
generations  gave  to  the  mission  and  the 
nature  of  the  founder.  The  interpretation 
may  involve  a  false  doctrine  of  life.  If  so, 
and  if  the  modem  man  thinks  so,  the 
modern  man  cannot  consistently  be  and 
remain  a  Christian.     But  I  do  not  believe 

29 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pretation  of  his  nature  and  mission,  which, 
according  to  the  same  tradition,  only  his 
sufferings,  his  death,  his  reported  resurrec- 
tion, and  the  coming  of  his  spirit  into  a  new 
unity  with  his  disciples,  could  begin  to  make 
manifest.  Thus  the  Master  and  the  inter- 
pretation early  began  to  be  distinguished. 
Thus  they  remain  distinguished  throughout 
Christian  history. 

And  thus,  for  the  fictitious  being  whom  I 
called   the   "modem   man"  — for   him   also, 
in  case  he  chooses  to  consider  the  problem 
of  Christianity  at  all,  it  must  sooner  or  later 
become   manifest,   I   think,   that   he   cannot 
decide  whether  or  no  he  is  in  creed  a  Chris- 
tian,   without   reflecting   upon   his    attitude, 
both   towards  the   Master  and   towards  the 
interpretations  which  history  has  given  to  the 
mission  of  the  Master.     To  ignore,  or  even 
to  minimize,  the  importance  of  these  inter- 
pretations, to  suppose  that  Christianity  can 
be   viewed   simply,   or  even   mainly,   as   the 
religion  taught  during  the  founder's  life  by 
the  Master  himself,  is,  I  think,  to  miss  the 

28 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

meaning  of  history  to  a  degree  unworthy  of 
the  highly  developed  historical  sense  which 
should  characterize  the  "modern  man." 

The  "modern  man"  may  have  to  decide, 
in  the  end,  that  he  is,  in  creed,  no  Christian 
at  all,  simply  because  he  may  have  to  reject 
some  or  all  of  the  interpretations  which  tra- 
dition has  asserted  to  be  true  of  the  mission 
and  of  the  divine  relations  of  the  Master. 
But  the  modern  man  will  be  unable,  in  my 
opinion,  to  be  just  to  his  own  historical  sense 
and  to  the  genuine  histor^^  of  Christianity, 
unless  he  sees  that  the  Christian  religion 
always  has  been  and,  historically  speaking, 
must  be,  not  simply  a  religion  taught  by  any 
man  to  any  company  of  disciples,  but  always 
also  a  religion  whose  sense  has  consisted,  at 
least  in  part,  in  the  interpretation  which  later 
generations  gave  to  the  mission  and  the 
nature  of  the  founder.  The  interpretation 
may  involve  a  false  doctrine  of  life.  If  so, 
and  if  the  modem  man  thinks  so,  the 
modem  man  cannot  consistently  be  and 
remain  a  Christian.     But  I  do  not  beUeve 

29 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

that  the  modern  man,  when  he  considers  the 
lesson  of  the  history  of  Christianity,  can  long 
remain  content  with  the  view  that  Chris- 
tianity is,  in  its  principally  effective  features, 
historically  reducible  to  the  simple  statement 
of  what,  according  to  tradition,  the  Master 
taught  to  those  who,  while  he  was  alive, 
heard  his  words. 

VI 

Historically  speaking,  Christianity  has, 
then,  these  two  sharply  contrasted  aspects. 
I  have  said  that  the  issue  presented  by  this 
contrast  is  the  most  familiar  one  which,  at 
the  moment,  any  one  who  approaches  the 
problem  of  Christianity  has  to  meet.  You 
may  still  ask:  But  what  is  this  issue?  I 
answer:  It  is  the  issue  presented  by  the 
question :  Of  these  two  contrasting  aspects 
of  Christianity,  which  is,  not  only  histori- 
callv  inevitable,  but  also  the  deeper,  the  more 
essential,  the  more  permanently  important 
aspect  ? 

Now   to   such   a   question   the   history   of 

30 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

Christianity,  necessary  as  it  is  in  preparing 
the  way  for  a  decision,  cannot  alone  furnish 
the  final  answer.  And  at  this  point  we  are 
already  able  to  give  a  reason  for  asserting 
that  not  only  history,  but  the  intrinsic  nature 
of  the  interests  which  are  involved,  will 
require  us,  in  our  later  lectures,  to  lay  our 
main  stress  upon  that  aspect  of  Christianity 
which,  in  the  order  of  time,  came  into  exist- 
ence later  than  the  Master's  own  reported 
teaching.  Let  me  state  this  reason  at  once, 
dogmatically  and  quite  inadequately,  but 
enough  to  indicate  the  course  that  we  are 
to  pursue. 

The  religion  of  the  Master,  as  he  is  said 
to  have  taught  it,  involves  many  counsels, 
addressed  to  the  individual  man,  regarding 
the  art  of  life  and  regarding  the  way  of 
entering  w^hat  the  Master  called  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  But  these  counsels,  this  preach- 
ing of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  —  they  ap- 
peared, in  tradition,  as  stated  in  brief  outlines 
and  often  as  expressed  in  parables.  It  appears 
that,  at  least  for  the  multitudes  who  listened, 

31 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

often  for  the  disciples  themselves,  the  parables 
needed  interpretation,  and  that  the  sayings 
must  be  understood  in  the  light  of  an  insight 
which,  at  the  time  when  these  words  were 
first  uttered,  was  seldom  or  never  in  the 
possession  even  of  those  who  were  nearest 
to  the  Master. 

This  further  insight,  according  to  the  same 
tradition,  was  something  that,  as  was  held, 
would    come    whenever   the    Master's    spirit 
was  still  more  fully  revealed  to  his  disciples. 
Often  when  they  heard  their  Teacher  speaking 
most  plainly,  the  disciples,  as  we  are  told, 
did  not  yet  quite  understand  what  he  meant. 
And  now,  as  a  fact,  the  reported  sayings  and 
parables  of  the  founder  possess,  side  by  side 
with    their    so    well-known    directness    and 
simplicity,   certain   equally   well   known   but 
highly  problematic  traits  which,   in  all  the 
ages   that   have   since   elapsed,   have  led  to 
repeated   questions   as  to  what  the  Master 
meant  by  some  of  the  most  central  doctrines 
that  he  taught.     For  instance,  precisely  what 
he  tauglit  about  the  office  and  work  of  love, 

32 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

and  about  self-sacrifice,  and  about  casting 
off  all  care  for  the  morrow  —  such  things  have 
often  seemed  mysterious. 

And  precisely  these  more  problematic  fea- 
tures of  the  original  teachings  of  the  Master 
are  the  ones  to  which  the  later  Christian 
community  gave  interpretations  that  it  be- 
lieved to  be  due  to  the  guidance  of  the  Master's 
spirit,  and  that  it  therefore  inevitably  con- 
nected with  its  doctrine  regarding  his  own 
person  and  his  mission.  Since  these  later 
interpretations  have  to  do  with  matters  that 
the  original  sayings  and  parables,  so  far  as 
reported,  leave  more  or  less  problematic,  so 
as  to  challenge  further  inquiry ;  and  since  all 
these  more  problematic  matters  are  indeed 
of  central  importance  for  the  whole  estimate 
of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life,  we  may  indeed 
have  to  recognize  that  the  primitive  Chris- 
tianity of  the  sayings  of  the  Master  was  both 
enriched  and  deepened  by  the  interpretation 
which  the  Christian  community  gave  to  his 
person,  to  his  work,  and  to  his  whole  religion. 
I  believe  this  to  be  the  case. 


I 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Our  later  discussion  will  set  forth  some  of 
the  further  reasons  for  this  opinion.     These 
lectures  will  not  be  concerned  with  the  his- 
tory of  dogma;    and  all  our  discussions  con- 
cerning   the    truth    of    Christianity    will    be 
guided  by  an  interest  rather  in  the  essentials 
of  religion  than   in  any   of    the  refinements 
of  theology.     But  it  will  be  one  of  my  theses 
that  the  essential  ideas  of  Christianity  include 
doctrines  which  indeed  supplement,  but  which 
at  the  same  time  in  spirit  fulfil,  the  view  of 
life  and  of  salvation  which  the  original  teach- 
ing of  the  Master  regarding  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  as  that  teaching  is  reported  by  tradi- 
tion,  made  known  to  those  who  heard  him. 
It  will  help  our  enterprise  if,  at  this  point, 
I  simply  state  what,  in  my  opinion,  are  the 
Christian   ideas   which   both   the   history   of 
Christianity,  and  the  intrinsic  importance  of 
the  religious  concerns  involved,  will  make  it 
most  needful  for  us  to  consider,  for  the  sake 
of  a  fair  comprehension  of    the  prdblem  of 
Christianity.     These  central  Christian  ideas, 
as  I  shall  here  name  them  and  shall  later 

34 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

discuss    them,    are   three.     They    are    all    of 
them  ideas    that  came  to   the   mind  of  the 
Christian  world  in  the  course  of  later  efforts 
to  explain   the   true  meaning  of  the  original 
teaching  regarding  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  t 
The  Christian  community  regarded  them  as 
due  to  the  guidance  of  the  founder's  spirit ;  \ 
but  was  also  aware  that,  when  they  first  came 
to  light,  they  involved  new  features,  which 
the    reported    sayings    and    parables    of    the 
Master  had  not  yet  made  so  explicit  as  they 
afterwards  became.     The  Spirit  which,  as  the 
early  church  came  to  believe,  was  in  due  time 
to  guide  the  faithful  to  all  truth,  was  held  to  be 
the  interpreter  who  revealed  these  new  things. 
Our  own  main  interest  is  here  not  in  the  theo- 
logical aspect  of  the  development  which   led 
to   these   ideas.     What   concerns   us   is   that 
these   ideas   actually  appeared  in  the  Chris- 
tian community  as  an  interpretation  of  what 
the  founder  had  meant,  while,  as  we  shall  later 
more   clearly    see,   they   came   to    constitute 
vital    and    essential    portions  of  the  religious 
message  which  Christianity  had  for  mankind. 

35 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


VII 

We  may  be  aided  in  our  selection  of  these 
three  central   ideas  by  mentioning  the   fact 
that  certain  features  of  the  founder's  reported 
teaching   of    the  Kingdom  of   Heaven  have 
generally  seemed,  to  later  ages,  to  stand   in 
need  of  an  interpretation  which  the  founder's 
recorded  words  did  not  wholly  furnish.     The 
three  ideas  here  in  question  were  first  devel- 
oped in  the  mind  of  the  Christian  community 
in  the  midst  of  the  early  efforts  to  reach  this 
further   interpretation   of   what   the  founder 
had  meant  by  the  words  that  were  attributed 
to  him  by  tradition. 

The  Master's  teachings  are,  for  the  most 
part,  directed,  in  his  reported  sayings,  to 
individual  men,  — either  to  some  one  indi- 
vidual viewed  as  a  typical  man  ("Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself"),  or  to  com- 
panies of  individuals  viewed  as  of  such  nature 
that  the  same  counsel  applies  equally  to  any 
or  to  all  of  these  individuals  alike  (*' Blessed 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

are  the  meek ;"  "Be  ye  perfect  as  your  Father 
in  heaven  is  perfect").     Meanwhile,  the  Mas- 
ter freely  speaks  of  what  he  calls  the  Kingdom 
of   Heaven.     And   the   Kingdom   of   Heaven 
appears,  on  its  very  face,  to  be  some  sort  of 
social  order,  some  sort  of  collective  life,  some 
kind  of  community.     Yet  the  reported  sayings 
do   not,    when   taken   by   themselves,    make 
perfectly  explicit  what  that  social  order,  what 
that  community,  is  to  which  the  name  King- 
dom of  Heaven  is  intended  to  apply.     Tradi- 
tion represents  the  earliest  interpretation  of 
the  term  by  the  Disciples  of  Christ  themselves, 
while  he  was  yet  speaking  to  them,  as,  in 
their  own  minds,  more  or  less  doubtful.     Was 
the  Master's  kingdom  to  be  of  this  world,  or 
of  some  other  ?     Was  it  to  be  a  more  or  less 
visible  political  social  order?     Was  it  to  be 
wholly  a  matter  of  the  inner  spiritual  lives  of 
many  outwardly  separate  individuals  ("The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within  you"). 

Plainly,  whatever  the  doctrine  of  the  King- 
dom really  meant,  its  first  expression  was  such 
as  to  call  for  a  further  development,  and  for  a 

37 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

richer  interpretation  than  any  one  of  the  par- 
ables of  the  Kingdom,  as  originally  reported, 
gave  to  it.     The  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  was 
at  once  simple,  direct,  personal,   and  deep, 
mysterious,  prophetic  of  something  yet  to  be 
disclosed.     And  herewith  we  at  once  remind 
ourselves    how    the    Christian    community, 
living,  as  it  believed,  in  and  through  the  spirit 
.  of  the  Master,  was  early  led  to  develop  the 
/   doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  into  the  doctrine  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

When,  however,  we  consider,  not  the  his- 
torical accidents  and  not  the  external  show, 
but  rather  the  deeper  spirit  of  this  doctrine 
about  the  Christian  Church,  we  are  led  to  look 
beyond,  or  beneath,  all  the  special  dogmas  and 
forms  in  which  the  opinion  and  the  practice 
of  the  historical  Christian  Church  has  found 
in  various  ages  a  manifold  and  often  a  very 
imperfect  expression.     And  we  are  also  led 
to  state,  as  the  inner  and  deeper  sense  of  the 
whole  process  of  the  history  of  the  Church, 
the  first  of  the  three  ideas  of  Christianity,  — 
which  will  hereafter  guide  our  study. 

38 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

And  we  may  here  state  this  first  Christian 
idea  in  our  own  words  thus,  namely,  as  thcr 
doctrine  that  "The  salvation  of  the  individual 
man  is  determined  by  some  sort  of  membership' 
in  a  certain  sj)iritual  comnuniity,  —  a  religious 
community  and,  in  its  inmost  nature,  a  divine 
community,  in  whose  life  the  Christian  vir- 
tues are  to  reach  their  highest  expression  and, 
the  spirit  of  the  Master  is  to  obtain  its  earthly 
fulfilment."  In  other  w^ords :  There  is  a' 
certain  universal  and  divine  spiritual  com- 
munity. Membership  in  that  community  is 
necessary  to  the  salvation  of  man. 

I  propose,  in  our  later  lectures,  to  consider, 
not  the  history  and  not,  in  any  detail,  the 
dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church,  but  the  mean- 
ing, the  foundation,  the  truth  of  this  first  of 
our  three  Christian  ideas,  —  the  idea  of  the 
divinely  significant  spiritual  community  of  the 
faithful,  —  the  idea  that  such  a  community 
exists,  and  is  needed,  and  is  an  indispensable 
means  of  salvation  for  the  individual  man,  and 
is  the  fitting  realm  wherein  alone  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  which  the  Master  preached  can 

39 


^ 


I 


[E    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

^iid  its  expression,  and  wherein  alone  the 
Christian  virtues  can  be  effectively  practised. 
We  are  to  ask,  What  is  the  foundation  of 
this  idea  ?  What  does  it  mean  ?  In  essence, 
is  it  a  true  idea  ?  In  what  sense  does  it 
retain  its  meaning  and  its  value  to-day,  and 
for  the  modern  man,  and  (in  so  far  as  we  can 
foresee)  in  what  way  is  it  destined  to  guide 
the  future?  This  inquiry  will  constitute  an 
essential  part  of  our  study  of  the  Problem  of 
Christianity. 

The  mention  of  this  first  of  the  three  Chris- 
tian ideas  leads  me  at  once  to  the  mention  of 
two  other  ideas.  These  two  stand  in  the 
closest  correlation  with  this  first  idea  and 
with  each  other,  and  share  with  the  first  a 
character  to  which,  as  we  shall  later  see,  the 
mystery,  the  elementally  human  significance, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  problem  of  Christianity 
are  all  of  them  due.  Both  of  these  ideas  grew 
up  because,  in  the  preaching  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  the  Master  appealed  to  the  individ- 
ual man,  but  left  certain  aspects  of  this  ap- 
peal mysterious,  so  that  the  question,   What 

40 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

find  its  expression,  and  wherein  alone  the 
Christian  virtues  can  be  effectively  practised. 
We  are  to  ask.  What  is  the  foundation  of 
this  idea  .?  What  does  it  mean  ?  •  In  essence, 
is  it  a  true  idea.?  In  what  sense  does  it 
retain  its  meaning  and  its  value  to-day,  and 
for  the  modern  man,  and  (in  so  far  as  we  can 
foresee)  in  what  way  is  it  destined  to  guide 
the  future.?  This  inquiry  will  constitute  an 
essential  part  of  our  study  of  the  Problem  of 
Christianity. 

The  mention  of  this  first  of  the  three  Chris- 
tian ideas  leads  me  at  once  to  the  mention  of 
two  otlier  ideas.  These  two  stand  in  the 
closest  correlation  with  this  first  idea  and 
with  each  other,  and  share  with  the  first  a 
character  to  which,  as  we  shall  later  see,  the 
mystery,  the  elementally  human  significance, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  problem  of  Christianity 
are  all  of  them  due.  Both  of  these  ideas  grew 
up  because,  in  the  preaching  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  the  Master  appealed  to  the  individ- 
ual man,  but  left  certain  aspects  of  this  ap- 
peal mysterious,  so  that  the  question,   A\Tiat 

40 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

is  the  nature  and  the  worth  of  the  indiv-idual 
man?    was    left    a    matter    of    serious    heart 

searching. 

The   second   of   our   three   ideas   seems   at 
first  sharply   contrasted  with  the  gentle  and 
hopeful  spirit  of  some  of  the  Master's  best- 
known  and  most-loved  statements.     We  shall 
later  see,   however,  the  deeper  connection  of 
this  second  idea  with  what  the  Master  taughf 
about  the  individual  man.     It  is  the   grave, 
yes,  the  tragic  idea  that  can  be  stated,  in  the 
form  of  a  doctrine,  thus:     "The    individual 
human  being  is  by   nature  subject  to  some, 
overwhelming   moral    burden   from   which,   if 
unaided,  he  cannot  escape."     This  burden  is 
at  once  a  natural  inheritance  and  a   burden 
of  personal  guilt.     Both  because  of  what  has 
technically  been  called  original  sin,    and  be- 
cause of  the  sins  that  he  himself  has  com- 
mitted, the  individual  is  doomed  to  a  spiritual 
ruin  from  which  only   a  divine  intervention 
can  save  him.     The  individual,  as  Paul  first 
stated  the  case,  is,  apart  from  divine  grace, 
"  dead  in  trespasses  and  sins."     His  salvation, 

41 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

if  it  occurs  at  all,  must  involve  a  quickening, 
—  a  raising  of  the  dead. 

Thus  tragic,  thus  strangely  opposed  in  seem- 
ing to  the  more  comforting  and  hopeful  of 
the  parables  of  the  founder,  thus  also  very 
sharply  contrasted  with  some  of  our  now  most 
favorite  modern  doctrines  concerning  the  moral 
dignity  of  human  nature,  and  concerning  the 
course  of  the  natural  evolution  of  man  from 
lower  to  higher  spiritual  stages,  —  thus  para- 
doxical is  the  second  of  the  three  Christian 
ideas  that,  in  our  latter  discussion,  we  shall 
emphasize.  The  first  of  the  three  central 
ideas  involves,  as  we  just  saw,  the  assertion 
that  the  way  of  salvation  lies  in  the  union  of 
the  individual  with  a  certain  universal  spiritual 
community.  The  second  of  these  ideas,  the 
idea  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual,  in- 
cludes the  doctrine  that  of  himself,  and  apart 
from  the  spiritual  community  which  the  divine 
plan  provides  for  his  relief,  the  individual  is 
powerless  to  escape  from  his  innate  and  ac- 
quired character,  the  character  of  a  lost  soul,  or, 
in  Paul's  phrase,  of  a  dead  man,  who  is  by  in- 


42 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

heritance  tainted,  and  is  also  by  his  own  deeds 
involved  in  hopeless  guilt.  You  may  well 
ask:  Can  the  modern  man  make  anything 
of  such  anT3eaf~~TKis~cpesfion7as  we  shall 
see,  is  a  very  significant  part  of  our  problem 
of  Christianity. 

The  third  leading  idea  of  Christianity  which 
we  shall  have  to  consider  is  the  one  that  many 
modern  minds  regard  as  the  strangest,  as  the 
most  hopelessly  problematic,  of  the  three.     It 
is  also  the  one  whose  relation  to  the  original 
teachings  of  the  Master  seems  most  problem- 
atic.     It  is  the  idea  expressed  by  the  asser- 
tion:    The   only   escape   for   the   individual, 
the  only  union  with  the  divine  spiritual  com- 
munity which  he  can  obtain,  is  provided  by 
the  divine  plan  for  the  redemption  of  man- 
kind.    And  this  plan   is   one  which  includes 
an  Atonement  for  the  sins  and  for  the  guilt 
of  mankind.     This  atonement,  and  this  alone, 
makes  possible  the  entrance  of  the  individual 
into  a  saving  union  with  the  divine  spiritual 
community,   and  reveals  the  full  meaning  of 
what  the  Master  meant  by  the  Kingdom  of 

43 


i^ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Heaven.  Without  atonement,  no  salvation. 
And  the  divine  plan  has  in  fact  provided  and 
accomplished  the  atoning  work. 

VIII 

The  idea  of  the  spiritual  community  in 
union  with  which  man  is  to  win  salvation,  the 
idea  of  the  hopeless  and  guilty  burden  of 
the  individual  when  unaided  by  divine  grace, 
the  idea  of  the  atonement,  —  these  are,  for 
our  purposes,  the  three  central  ideas  of  Chris- 
tianity. Of  these  ideas  the  second,  and  still 
more  the  third,  seems,  at  first  sight,  especially 
foreign  to  the  modern  mind,  as  most  of  us 
conceive  that  mind;  and  all  three  appear  to 
be  due  to  interpretations  of  the  mind  of  the 
Master  which  came  into  existence  only  after 
his  earthly  period  of  teaching  had  ceased. 
The  discussion  of  the  meaning  and  the  truth 
of  each  of  these  three  ideas  is  to  constitute 
our  proposed  contribution  to  the  Problem  of 
Christianity.  The  justification  of  our  enter- 
prise lies  in  the  fact  that,  familiar  as  these 
three  ideas  are,  they  are  still  almost  wholly 

44 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

misunderstood,  both  by  the  apologists  who 
view  them  in  the  light  of  traditional  dogmas, 
and  by  the  critics  who  assail  the  letter  of 
dogmas,  but  who  fail  to  grasp  the  spirit. 

We  have  in  outline  stated  how  we  define 
this  Problem  of  Christianity.     We  have  enu- 
merated three  ideas  which  we  are  to  regard  as 
the  essential  ideas  of  Christianity.     We  have 
indicated  the  method  that  we  are  to  follow 
in  discussing  these  ideas  and  in  grasping  and 
in   attempting   to   clarify   our  problem.    Our 
method  is  to  consist  in  an  union  of  an  effort 
to  read  the  lesson  of  history  with  an  effort  to 
estimate,  upon  a   reasonable    basis,   the  phi- 
losophy of  the  Christian   religion.     Already, 
even  in  our  opening  statement,  we  have  en- 
deavored to  illustrate  this  union  of  historical 
summary  with  philosophical  reflection. 


45 


n 


THE  roEA  OF  THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY 


LECTURE  II 

THE  roEA  OF  THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY 

IN  accordance  with  the  plan  set  forth  at 
the  close  of  our  first  lecture,  we  begin  our 
study  of  the  Problem  of  Christianity  by  a 
discussion  of  the  Christian  idea  of  the  Church, 
and  of  its  universal  mission. 


The  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  as  characterized 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  in  the  para- 
bles, is  something  that  promises  to  the  indi- 
vidual man  salvation,  and  that  also  possesses, 
in  some  sense  which  the  Master  left  for  the 
future  to  make  clearer,  a  social  meaning.  To 
the  individual  the  doctrine  says,  "The  King- 
dom of  Heaven  is  within  you."  But  when  in 
the  end  the  Kingdom  shall  come,  the  will  of 
God,  as  we  learn,  is  to  be  done  on  earth  as  it 
is  in  heaven.  And  therewith  the  kingdoms 
of  this  world  —  the  social  order  as  it  now  is 
and  as  it  naturally  is  —  will  pass  away.     Then 

>  46 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

there  will  come  to  pass  the  union  of  the 
blessed  with  their  Father,  and  also,  as  appears, 
with  one  another,  in  the  heavenly  realm  which 
the  Father  has  prepared  for  them. 

This  final  union  of  all  who  love  is  not  de- 
scribed at  length  in  tlie  recorded  words  of  the 
Master.  A  religious  imagery  familiar  to  those 
who  heard  the  parables  that  deal  with  the 
end  of  the  world  was  freely  used ;  and  this 
imagery  gives  us  to  understand  that  the  con- 
summation of  all  things  will  unite  in  a  heav- 
enly community  those  who  are  saved.  But 
the  organization,  the  administration,  the  ranks 
and  dignities,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  the 
Master  does  not  describe. 

When  the  Christian  Church  began,  in  the 
Apostolic  Age,  to  take  visible  form,  the  idea 
of  the  mission  of  the  Church  expressed  the 
meaning  which  the  Christian  community  came 
to  attach  to  the  social  implications  of  the 
founder's  doctrine.  Wliat  was  merely  hinted 
in  the  parables  now  became  explicit.  The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  was  to  be  realized  in 
and   through   and   for  the   Church,  —  in   the 

60 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

fellowship  of  the  faithful  who  constituted 
the  Church  as  it  was  on  earth ;  through  the 
divine  Spirit  that  was  believed  to  guide  the 
life  of  the  Church ;  and  for  the  future  ex- 
perience of  the  Church,  whenever  the  end 
should  come,  and  whenever  the  purpose  of 
God  should  finally  be  manifested  and  accom- 
plished. 

Such,  in  brief,  was  the  teaching  of  the  early 
Christian  community.  Unquestionably  this 
teaching  added  something  new  to  the  original 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom.  But  this  addition, 
as  we  shall  later  see,  was  more  characteristic 
of  the  new  religion  than  was  any  portion  of 
the  sayings  that  tradition  attributed  to  the 
Master,  and  was  as  inseparable  from  the  es- 
sence of  primitive  Christianity  as  the  belief 
of  the  disciples  themselves  was  inseparable 
from  their  very  earliest  interpretations  of  the 
person  and  the  mission  of  their  leader. 

It  is  useless,  I  think,  for  the^  most  eager 
defender  and  expounder  of  primitive  Chris- 
tianity in  its  purity  to  ignore  the  fact  that, 
whatever  else  the  Christian  religion  involves, 

51 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


some  sort  of  faith  or  doctrine  regarding  the 
office  and  the  meaning  of  the  Church  was  an 
essential  part  of  the  earhest  Christianity  that 
existed   after   the   founder    had    passed  from 

earth. 

Since  our  problem  of  Christianity  involves 
the  study  of  the  most  vital  Christian  ideas, 
how  can  we  better  begin  our  task  than  by 
asking  what  this  idea  of  the  Church  really 
means,  and  what  value  and  truth  it  possesses  ? 
Not  only  is  such  a  beginning  indeed  advisable, 
but,  at  first  sight,  it  seems  especially  adapted 
to  enable  us  to  use  the  manifold  and  abun- 
dant aids  which,  as  we  might  suppose,  the 
aspirations  of  all  Christian  ages  would  fur- 
nish for  our  guidance. 

For,  as  you  may  naturally  ask,  is  not  the 
history  of  Christianity,  viewed  in  at  least 
one  very  significant  way,  simply  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church  ?  Is  not  the  idea  of 
the  Church,  then,  not  only  essential  and  potent, 
but  one  of  the  most  familiar  of  the  religious 
ideas  of  Christendom?  Must  not  the  con- 
sciousness  of   all   really    awakened  Christian 

52 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

communities  whose  creeds  are  recorded  stand 
ready  to  help  the  inquirer  who  wants  to  in- 
terpret this  idea?  May  we  not  then  begin 
this  part  of  our  enterprise  with  high  hope, 
sure  that,  as  we  attempt  to  grasp  and  to  esti- 
mate this  first  of  our  three  essential  Christian 
ideas,  we  shall  have  the  ages  of  Christian 
development  as  our  helpers?  So,  I  repeat, 
you  may  very  naturally  ask.  But  the  answer 
to  this  question  is  not  such  as  quite  fulfils 
the  hope  just  suggested. 


n 

As  a  fact,  the  idea  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
Christian  Church  constitute  indeed  a  vital  and 
permanent  part  of  Christianity ;  and  a  study 
of  this  idea  is  a  necessary,  and  may  properly 
be  the  first,  part  of  our  inquiry  into  the  Prob- 
lem of  Christianity. 

But  we  must  not  begin  this  inquiry  without 
a  due  sense  of  its  difficulty.  We  must  remem- 
ber at  the  very  outset  the  fact  that  all  the 
Christian  ages,  up  to  the  present  one,  unite, 
not  to  present  to  us  any  finished  interpreta- 

53 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

tion  of  the  idea  of  the  Church,  but  rather  to 
prove  that  this  idea  is  as  fluent  in  its  expres- 
sion as  it  is  universal  in  its  aim;  and  is  as 
baffling,  by  reason  of  the  conflicts  of  its  inter- 
preters, as  it  is  precious  in  the  longings  that 
constitute  its  very  heart. 

If  this  idea  comforts  the  faithful,  it  is  also 
a  stern  idea ;    for  it  demands  of  those  who 
accept  it  the  resolute  will  to  face  and  to  con- 
tend against  the  greatest  of  spiritual  obstacles, 
namely,    the   combined    waywardness    of  the 
religious    caprices   of   all  Christian  mankind. 
For  the  true  Church,  as  we  shall  see,  is  still 
a  sort  of  ideal  challenge  to  the  faithful,  rather 
than  an  already  finished  institution,  —  a  call 
upon  men  for  a  heavenly  quest,  rather  than 
a  present  possession   of  humanity.     "Create 
me,"  — this    is   the    word    that   the    Church, 
viewed  as  an  idea,  addresses  to  mankind. 

Meanwhile  the  contrast  between  the  letter 
and  the  spirit  of  a  fundamental  doctrine  is 
nowhere  more  momentous  and  more  tragic 
than  in  case  of  the  doctrine  of  the  nature 
and  the  office  of  the  Christian  Church.     The 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

spirit  of  this  doctrine  consists,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  in  the  assertion  that  there  is  a 
certain  divinely  ordained  and  divinely  signifi- 
cant spiritual  community,  to  which  all  must 
belong  who  are  to  attain  the  true  goal  of  life ; 
that  is,  all  who,  to  use  the  distinctly  religious 
phraseology,  are  to  be  saved. 

How  profoundly  reasonable  are  the  con- 
siderations upon  which  this  doctrine  is  based 
we  have  yet  to  see,  and  can  only  estimate  in 
the  light  of  a  due  study  of  all  the  essential 
Christian  ideas.  To  my  own  mind  these  con- 
siderations are  such  as  can  be  interpreted 
and  defended  without  our  needing,  for  the 
purposes  of  such  interpretation  and  defence, 
any  acceptance  of  traditional  dogmas.  For 
these  considerations  are  based  upon  human 
nature.  They  have  to  do  with  interests 
which  all  reasonable  men,  whether  Christian 
or  non-Christian,  more  or  less  clearly  recog- 
nize, in  proportion  as  men  advance  to  the 
higher  stages  of  the  art  of  life. 

The  spirit,  then,  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Church  is  as  reasonable  as  it  is  universal.     It 

55 


I 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

is  Christian  by  virtue  of  features  which,  when 
once  understood,  also  render  it  simply  and 
impressively  human.  This,  I  say,  is  what 
our  entire  study  of  the  three  Christian  ideas 
will,  in  the  end,  if  I  am  right,  bring  to  our 
attention. 

Ill 

But  the  letter  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Church 
has  been  subject  to  fortunes  such  as,  in  various 
ways  and  degrees,  attend  the  visible  embodi- 
ment of  all  the  great  ideals  of  humanity ;  only 
that,  as  I  have  just  said,  the  resulting  tragedy 
is,  in  no  other  case  in  which  spirit  and  letter 
are  in  conflict,  greater  than  in  this  case. 

In  general  the  risks  of  temporary  disaster 
which  great  ideals  run  appear  to  be  directly 
proportioned  to  the  value  of  the  ideals.  The 
disasters  may  be  destined  to  give  place  to 
victory;  but  great  truths  bear  long  sorrows. 
What  humanity  most  needs,  it  most  persist- 
ently misunderstands.  The  spirit  of  a  great 
ideal  may  be  immortal ;  its  ultimate  victory, 
as  we  may  venture  to  maintain,  may  be  pre- 

56 


4 


i 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

determined  by  the  very  nature  of  things; 
but  that  fact  does  not  save  such  an  ideal  from 
the  fires  of  the  purgatory  of  time.  Its  very 
preciousness  often  seems  to  insure  its  repeated, 
its  long-enduring,  effacement.  The  comfort 
that  it  would  bring  if  it  were  fully  understood 
and  accepted  may  make  all  the  greater  the 
sorrow  of  a  world  that  still  waits  for  the 
light. 

In  case  of  the  history  of  the  essential  idea 
of  the  Church,  the  complications  of  dogma,  the 
strifes  of  the  sects,  the  horrors  of  the  religious 
wars  in  former  centuries,  the  confusions  of 
controversy  in  our  own  day,  must  not  make 
us  despair.  Such  is  the  warfare  of  ideals. 
Such  is  this  present  world. 

Least  of  all  may  we  attempt,  as  many  do, 
to  accuse  this  or  that  special  tendency  or 
power  in  the  actual  Church,  past  or  present, 
of  being  mainly  responsible  for  this  failure 
to  appreciate  the  ideal  Church.  The  defect 
lies  deeper  than  students  of  such  problems 
usually  suppose.  Human  nature,  —  not  any 
one  party,  —  yes,  the  very  nature  of  the  pro- 

57 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

cesses  of  growth  themselves,  and  not  any 
particular  form  of  religious  or  of  moral  error, 
must  be  viewed  as  the  source  of  the  principal 
tragedies  of  the  history  of  all  the  Christian 
ideals. 

In  fact,  the  true  idea  of  the  Church  has  not 
been  forsaken ;  it  is,  in  a  very  real  sense,  still 
to  be  found,  or  rather,  to  be  created.  We 
have  to  do,  in  this  case,  not  so  much  with 
apostasy  as  with  evolution.  To  be  sure,  at 
the  very  outset,  the  ideal  of  the  Church  wag 
seen  afar  off  through  a  glass,  darkly.  The 
well-known  apocalyptic  vision  revealed  the 
true  Church  as  the  New  Jerusalem  that 
was  vet  to  come  down  from  heaven.  The 
expression  of  the  idea  was  left,  by  the  early 
Church,  as  a  task  for  the  ages.  The  spirit 
of  that  idea  was  felt  rather  than  ever  ade- 
quately formulated,  and  the  vision  still  re- 
mains one  of  the  principal  grounds  and  sources 
of  the  hope  of  humanity. 


i 


.•^s 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

IV 

Such  doctrines,  and  such  conflicts  of  spirit 
and  letter,  cannot  be  understood  unless  our 
historical  sense  is  well  awakened.  On  the 
other  hand,  they  cannot  be  understood  merely 
through  a  study  of  history.  The  values  of 
ideals  must  be  ideally  discerned.  If  viewed 
without  a  careful  and  critical  reflection,  the 
history  of  such  processes  as  the  development 
of  the  idea  of  the  Church  presents  a  chaos  of 
contending  motives  and  factions.  Apart  from 
some  understanding  of  history,  all  critical 
reflection  upon  this  idea  remains  an  unfruitful 
exercise  in  dialectics.  We  must  therefore 
first  divide  our  task,  and  then  reunite  the 
results,  hoping  thereby  to  win  a  connected 
view  of  the  ideal  that  constitutes  our  present 
problem. 

Let  us,  then,  first  point  out  certain  motives 
which,  when  considered  quite  apart  from  any 
specifically  Christian  ideas  or  doctrines,  may 
serve  to  make  intelligible  the  ideal  which  is 
here  in  question.     Then  let  us  sketch  the  way 

59 


I 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  which  the  idea  of  the  Christian  Church 
first  received  expression. 

This  first  expression  of  the  idea  of  the 
Church,  as  we  shall  find,  transformed  the 
very  teaching  which  it  most  eloquently  reen- 
forced  and  explained,  namely,  the  teaching 
which  the  parables  of  the  founder  had  left 
for  the  faith  of  the  Christian  community  to 
interpret.  This  was  the  teaching  about  the 
office  and  the  saving  power  of  Christian  love. 
For  such,  as  we  shall  see,  was  the  first  result 
of  the  appearance  of  the  idea  of  the  Church 
in  Christian  history. 

By  sketching,  then,  some  non-Christian 
developments  and  then  a  stage  of  early 
Christian  life,  we  shall  get  two  aspects  of  the 
ideal  of  the  universal  community  before  us. 
Hereby  we  shall  not  have  reached  any  solu- 
tion of  our  problem  of  Christianity;  but  we 
shall  have  brought  together  in  our  minds  cer- 
tain Christian  and  certain  non-Christian  ideas 
w^hose  interrelations  will  hereafter  prove  to 
be  of  the  utmost  importance  for  our  whole 
enterprise. 

60 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

Next  in  order,  then,  comes  a  brief  review 
of  some  of  those  motives  which,  apart  from 
Christian    history    and    Christian    doctrine, 
make  the  ideal  of  the  universal  community 
a  rationally  significant  ideal.     These  motives, 
in  their  turn,  are  of  two  kinds.     Some  of  them 
are  motives  derived  from  the  natural  history 
of  mankind.     Some  of  them  are  distinctivelv 
ethical  motives.    We  must  become  acquainted, 
through  a  very  general  summary,  with  both 
of  these  sorts  of  motives.     Both  sorts  have 
interacted.     The  nature  of  man  as  a  social 
being  suggests  certain  ethical  ideals.     These 
ideals,  in  their  turn,  have  modified  the  natural 
history  of  society. 


As  an  essentially  social  being,  man  lives  in 
communities,  and  depends  upon  his  com- 
munities for  all  that  makes  his  civilization 
articulate.  His  communities,  as  both  Plato 
and  Aristotle  already  observed,  have  a  jprt 
of^ganicjife^ofjheir  own,  so  that  we  can 
compare  a  highly  developed  community,  such 

61 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

as  a  state,  either  to  the  soul  of  a  man  or  to  a 
jiving  animal.     A  community  is  not  a  mere 
collection  of  individuals.     It  is  a  sort  of  live 
unit,  that  has  organs,  as  the  body  of  an  indi- 
vidual has  organs.     A  community  grows  or 
decays,  is  healthy  or  diseased,  is  young  or 
aged,  much  as  any  individual  member  of  the 
community  possesses  such  characters.     Each 
of  the  two,  the  community  or  the  individual 
member,  is  as  much  a  live  creature  as  is  the 
other.     Not  only  does  the  community  live, 
it  has  a  mind  of  its  own,  —  a  mind  whose 
psychology  is  not  the  same  as  the  psychology 
of  an   individual   human   being.     The  social 
mind  displays  its  psychological  traits  in  its 
characteristic    products,  —  in    languages,    in 
customs,    in   religions,  —  products   which   an 
individual  human  mind,  or  even  a  collection 
of  such  minds,  when  they  are  not  somehow 
organized  into  a  genuine  community,  cannot 
produce.     Yet  language,  custom,  religion  are 
all  of  them  genuinely  mental  products. 

Communities,   in   their   turn,   tend,   under 
certain  conditions,  to  be  organized  into  com- 


V 


I 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

posite  communities  of  still  higher  and  higher 
grades.    States  are  united  in  empires ;  languages 
cooperate  in  the  production  of  universal  litera- 
ture ;  the  corporate  entities  of  many  commu- 
nities tend  to  organize  that  still  very  incom- 
plete community  which,  if  ever  it  comes  into 
existence,  will  be  the  world-state,  the  commu- 
nity possessing  the  whole  world's  civilization. 
So  far,  I  have  spoken  only  of  the  natural 
history  of  the  social  organization,  and  not  of 
its  value.     But  the  history  of  thought  shows'^ 
how  manifold  are  the  ways  in  which,  if  once 
you  grant  that  a  community  is  or  can  be  a    1 
living  organic  being,  with  a  mind  of  its  own, 
this  doctrine  about  the  natural  facts  can  be  j 
used   for   ideal,  for   ethical,  purposes.     Few 
ideas  have  been,  in  fact,  more  fruitful  than 
this  one  in  their  indirect  consequences  for  j 
ethical  doctrines  as  well  as  for  religion. 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  many  object 
to  every  such  interpretation  of  the  nature  of 
a  community  by  declaring  that,  whatever  our 
ethical  ideals  may  demand,  a  community 
really  has  no  mind  of  its  own  at  all,  and  is  no 

63 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

living  organism.     All  the  foregoing  statements 
about  the   mind   of  a   community    (as  such 
objectors  insist)  are   metaphorical.     A  com- 
munity is  a  collection  of  individuals.     And 
the  comparison  of  a  community  to  an  animal, 
or  to  a  soul,  is  at  best  a  convenient  fiction. 
Other  critics,  not  so  much  simply  rejecting 
the  foregoing  doctrine  as  hesitating,  remark 
that  to  call  a  community  an  organism,  and  to 
speak  of  its  possession  of  a  mind,  is  to  use 
some  form  of  philosophical  mysticism.     And 
such  mysticism,  they  say,  stands,  in  any  case, 
in  need  of  further  interpretation. 

To  such  objectors  I  shall  here  only  reply 
that  one  can  maintain  all  the  foregoing  views 
regarding  the  real  organic  life  and  regarding 
the  genuine  mind  of  a  community,  without 
committing  one's  self  to  any  form  of  philo- 
sophical mysticism,  and  without  depending 
upon  mere  metaphors.  For  instance,  Wundt,  / 
in  his  great  book  entitled  '*  Volkerpsychologie," 
treats  organized  communities  as  psychical  en- 
tities. He  does  so  deliberately,  and  states 
his  reasons.     But  he  does  all  this  purely  as 

64 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

a  psychologist.     Communities,  as  he  insists, 
behave  as  if  they  were  wholes,  and  exhibit 
psychological  laws  of  their  own.     Following 
Wundt,  I  have  already  said  that  it  is  the  com- 
munity which  produces  languages,  customs, 
religions.     These  are,  all  of  them,  intelligent 
mental  products,  which  can  be  psychologically 
analyzed,    which    follow   psychological    laws, 
and  which  exhibit  characteristic  processes  of 
mental    evolution,  —  processes    that    belong 
solely  to  organized  groups  of  men.     So  Wundt 
speaks  unhesitatingly  of  ^eG^esammtbewS^^P^' 
sein,    or    Gesammtmlle!   of"^'    community; 
4^      and  he  finds  this  mental  life  of  the  community 
\    to  be  as  much  an  object  for  the  student  of 
the  natural  history  of  mind,  as  is  the  conscious- 
ness  of  any  being  whose  life  a  psychologist 
can  examine.     His  grounds  are  not  mystical, 
but  empirical,  —  if  you   will,  pragmatic.     A 
community  behaves  like  an  entity  with  a  mind 
of  its  own.     Therefore  it  is  a  fair  "working 
hypothesis"  for  the  psychologist  to  declare 
that  it  is  such  an  entity,  and  that  a  community 
has,  or  is,  a  mind. 

»  65 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


VI 

So  far,  then,  I  have  merely  sketched  what, 
in  another  context,  will  hereafter  concern  us 
much  more  at  length.  For  in  later  lectures 
we  shall  have  to  study  the  metaphysical  prob- 
lems which  we  here  first  touch.  A  community 
can  be  viewed  as  a  real  unit.  So  we  have 
seen,  and  so  far  only  we  have  yet  gone. 

.  But  we  have  now  to  indicate  why  this  ^ 
conception,  whether  metaphysically  sound  or 
not,  is  a  conception  that  can  be  ethical  in  its 
purposes.  And  here  again  only  the  most 
elementary  and  fundamental  aspects  of  our 
topic  can  be,  in  this  wholly  preparatory  state- 
ment, mentioned.  To  all  these  problems  we 
shall  have  later  to  return. 

We  have  said  that  a  community  can  behave^ 
like  an  unit ;  we  have  now  to  point  out  that 
an  individual  member  of  a  community  can 
find  numerous  very  human  motives  for  be-/ 
having  towards  his  community  as  if  it  not 
only  were  an  unit,  but  a  very  precious  and 
worthy  being.     In  particular  he  —  the  indi- 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

vidual  member  —  may  love  his  community  as 
if  it  were  a  person,  may  be  devoted  to  it  as  if 
it  were  his  friend  or  father,  may  serve  it,  may 
live  and  die  for  it,  and  may  do  all  this,  not 
because  the  philosophers  tell  him  to  do  so,  but 
because  it  is  his  own  heart's  desire  to  act  thus. 
Of  such  active  attitudes  of  love  and  devo- 
tion towards  a  community,  on  the  part  of  an 
individual  member  of  that  community,  his- ^ 
tory  and  daily  life  present  countless  instances. 
One's  family,  one's  circle  of  personal  friends, 
one's  home,  one's  village  community,  one's 
clan,  or  one's  country  may  be  the  object  of 
such  an  active  disposition  to  love  and  to  serve 
the  community  as  an  unit,  to  treat  the  com- 
munity as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  super-personal  v 
being,  and  as  if  it  could,  in  its  turn,  possess 
the  value  of  a  person  on  some  higher  level. 
One  who  thus  loves  a  community,  regards  its 
type  of  life,  its  form  of  being,  as  essentially 
more    worthy    than    his    own.     He    becomes 
devoted  to  its  interests  as  to  something  that 
by  its  very  nature   is   nobler   than   himself. 
In  such  a  case  he  may  find,  in  his  devotion  to 

67 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


his  community,  his  fulfilment  and  his  moral 
destiny.  In  order  to  view  a  community  in  this 
way  it  is,  I  again  insist,  not  necessary  to  be  a 
mystic.  It  is  only  necessary  to  be  a  hearty 
friend,  or  a  good  citizen,  or  a  home-loving 
being. 

Countless  faithful  and  dutifully  disposed 
souls,  belonging  to  most  various  civilizations, 
—  people  active  rather  than  fanciful,  and  ear- 
nest rather  than  speculative,  —  have  in  fact 
viewed  their  various  communities  in  this  way. 
I  know  of  no  better  name  for  such  a  spirit 
of  active  devotion  to  the  community  to  which 
the  devoted  individual  belongs,  than  the  ex- 
cellent old  word  "  Loyalty,"  —  a  word  to 
whose  deeper  mearing  some  Japanese  thinkers 
have  of  late  years  recalled  our  attention. 

Loyalty,  as  I  have  elsewhere  defined  it,  is ^ 
the  willing  and  thoroughgoing  devotion  of  a 
self  to  a  cause,  when  the  cause  is  something 
which  unites  many  selves  in  one,  and  which 
is  therefore  the  interest  of  a  community.  For 
a  loyal  human  being  the  interest  of  the  com- 
munity to  which  he  belongs  is  superior  to 

68 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

every  merely  individual  interest  of  his  own.) 
He  actively  devotes  himself  to  this  cause.^    ^ 

Loyalty   exists   in    very    manifold    shapes,^ 
and  belongs  to  no  one  time,  or  country,  or 
people.     Warlike  tribes  and   nations,  during 
the  stages  of  their  life  which  are  intermediate 
between  savagery  and  civihzation,  have  often 
developed  a  high  type  of  the  loyal  conscious- 
ness,  and  hence  have  defined  their  virtues  in 
terms  of  loyalty.     Such  loyalty  may  last  over 
into  peaceful  stages  of  social  life;    and  the 
warlike  life  is  not  the  exclusive  originator  of 
the  loyal  spirit.     Loyalty  often  enters  into  a 
close  alliance  with  religion,  and  from  its  very 
nature  is  disposed  to  religious  interpretations. 
To  the  individual  the  loyal  spirit  appeals  by 
fixing  his  attention  upon  a  life  incomparably 
vaster  than  his  own  individual  life,  —  a  life 
which,  when  his  love  for  his  community  is 
once  aroused,  dominates  and  fascinates  him 
by  the  relative  steadiness,  the  strength  and 
fixity  and  stately  dignity,  of  ifs  motives  and 
demands. 

^SeeLecturelof  the"Philosophy  of  Loyalty*'  (New  York,  1908). 

69 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


The  individual  is  naturally  wayward  and 
capricious.  This  waywardness  is  a  constant 
source  of  entanglement  and  failure.  But  the 
community  which  he  loves  is  rendered  rela- 
tively constant  in  its  will  by  its  customs; 
yet  these  customs  no  longer  seem,  to  the  loyal 
individual,  mere  conventions  or  commands. 
For  his  social  enthusiasm  is  awakened  by  the 
love  of  his  kind  ;  and  he  glories  in  his  service, 
as  the  player  in  his  team,  or  the  soldier  in  his 
flag,  or  the  martyr  in  his  church.  If  his  reli- 
gion comes  into  touch  with  his  loyalty,  then 
his  gods  are  the  leaders  of  his  community, 
and  both  the  majesty  and  the  harmony  of 
the  loyal  life  are  thus  increased.  The  loyal 
motives  are  thus  not  only  moral,  but  also 
aesthetic.  The  community  may  be  to  the 
individual  both  beautiful  and  sublime. 

Deep-seated,  then,  in  human  nature  are  the 
reasons  that  make  loyalty  appear  to  the  in- 
dividual as  a  solution  for  the  problem  of  his 
personal  life.  Yet  these  motives  tend  to  still 
higher  and  vaster  conquests  than  we  have  here 
yet  mentioned.     Warlike  tribes  and  nations 

70 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY   ' 
fight  together ;   and  in  so  far  loyalty  contends 
with   loyalty.     But   on   a   more   highly   self- 
conscious  level  the  loyal  spirit  tends  to  assume 
the   form    of   chivalry.     The   really   devoted 
and  considerate  warrior  learns  to  admire  the 
loyalty  of  his  foe ;  yes,  even  to  depend  upon  it 
for  some  of  his  own  best  inspiration.     Knight- 
hood prizes  the  knightly  spirit.     The  loyalty 
of  the  clansmen  breeds  by  contagion  a  more 
intense  loyalty  in  other  clans ;  but  at  the  same 
time  it  breeds  a  love  for  just  such  loyalty. 
Kindred  clans  learn  to  respect  and,  ere  long^ 
to  share  one  another's  loyalty.     The  result  is 
an  ethical   motive  that   renders  the  alliance 
and,  on  occasion,  the  union  of  various  clans 
and  nationalities  not  only  a  possibility,  but 
a  conscious  ideal. 

The  loyal  are,  in  ideal,  essentially  kin.  If 
they  grow  really  wise,  they  observe  this  fact. 
The  spirit  that  loves  the  community  learns  to 
prize  itself  as  a  spirit  that,  in  all  who  are 
dominated  by  it,  is  essentially  one,  despite 
the  variety  of  special  causes,  of  nationalities, 
or  of  customs.    The  logical  development  of  the 

71 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


loyal  spirit  is  therefore  the  rise  of  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  ideal  of  an  universal  community 
of  the  loyal,  —  a  community  which,  despite 
all  warfare  and  jealousy,  and  despite  all 
varieties  of  gods  and  of  laws,  is  supreme  in  its 
value,  however  remote  from  the  present  life  of 
civilization. 

The  tendency  towards  the  formation  of 
such  an  ideal  of  an  universal  community  can 
be  traced  both  in  the  purely  secular  forms  of 
loyalty,  and  in  the  history  of  the  relations 
between  loyalty  and  religion  in  the  most 
varied  civilizations.  In  brief,  loyalty  is,  from^ 
the  first,  a  practical  faith  that  communities, 
viewed  as  units,  have  a  value  which  is  superior 
to  all  the  values  and  interests  of  detached 
individuals.  And  the  sort  of  loyalty  which 
reaches  the  level  of  true  chivalry  and  which 
loves  the  honor  and  the  loyalty  of  the  stranger 
or  even  of  the  foe,  tends,  either  in  company 
with  or  apart  from  any  further  religious  mo- 
tive, to  lead  men  towards  a  conception  of  the 
brotherhood  of  all  the  loyal,  and  towards  an 
estimation  of  all  the  values  of  life  in  terms  of 

72 


THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY 
their  relation  to  the  service  of  one  ideally 
universal  community.  To  this  community 
m  ideal  all  men  belong;^  and  to  act  as  if  one 
were  a  member  of  such  a  community  is  to  win 
in  the  highest  measure  the  goal  of  individual 
life.  It  is  to  win  what  religion  calls  salva- 
tion. 

When  thus  abstractly  stated,  the  ideal  of  an 
umversal  community  may  appear  far  away 
from  the  ordinary  practical  interests  of  the 
plain  man.     But  the  history  of  the  spirit  of 
loyalty  shows  that  ther^jsy strong  tendency 
of    loyalty    towards    such    universal    ideals. 
Some  such  conception  of  the  ideal  community 
of  all  mankind,  actually  resulting  from  re- 
flection  upon  the  spirit  of  loyalty,  received  an 
occasional  and  imperfect  formulation  in  Ro- 
man Stoicism.     In  this  more  speculative  shape 
the  Stoic  conception  of  the  universal  com- 
mumty  was  indeed  not  fitted  to  win  over  the 
Roman  world  as  a  whole  to  an  active  loyalty 
to  the  cause  of  mankind. 

Yet  the  conception  of  universal  loyalty,  as 
devotion  to  the  unity  of  an  ideal  community, 

73 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

a  community  whereof  all  loyal  men  should  be 
members,  has  not  been  left  merely  to  the 
Stoics,  nor  yet  to  any  other  philosophers  to 
formulate.  The  conception  of  loyalty  both 
springs  from  practical  interests  and  tends  of 
itself,  apart  from  speculation,  towards  the 
enlargement  of  the  ideal  community  of  the 
loyal  in  the  direction  of  identifying  that 
community  with  all  mankind.  The  history 
of  the  ideals  and  of  the  religion  of  Israel,  from 
the  Song  of  Deborah  to  the  prophets,  is  a 
classic  instance  of  the  process  here  in  ques- 
tion. 

vn 

We  have  thus  indicated  some  of  the  funda- 
mentally human  motives  which  the  ideal  of 
the  universal  community  expresses.  We  have 
next  to  turn  in  a  wholly  different  direction  and 
to  remind  ourselves  of  the  way  in  which  this 
ideal  found  its  place  in  the  early  history  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

I  cannot  better  introduce  this  part  of  my  dis- 
cussion than  by  calling  attention  to  a  certain 

74 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 
contrast  between  the  reported  teaching  of  the 
Master  regarding  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven, 
and  some  of  the  best-known  doctrines  of  the 
Apostle  Paul.     This  contrast  is  as  obvious  and 
as  familiar  as  it  has  been  neglected  by  students 
of    the    philosophy    of    Christianity.     Every 
word  that  I  can  say  about  it  is  old.     Yet  a 
survey  of  the  whole  matter  is  not  common, 
and  I  believe  that  this  contrast  has  never  more 
demanded  a  clear  restatement  than  it  does 
to-day. 

The  particular  contrast  which  I  here  have 
in  mind  is  not  the  one  which  both  the  apolo- 
gists and  the  critics  of  Pauline  Christianity 
usually   emphasize.     It   is   a  contrast   which 
does  not  directly  relate  to  Paul's  doctrine  of 
the  person  and  mission  of  Christ ;   and  never- 
theless it  is  ?.  contrast  that  bears  upon  the  very 
core  of  the  Gospel.     For  it  is  a  contrast  that 
has  to  do  with  the  doctrine  about  the  Mature, 
the  office,  the  saving  power  of  Christian  love 
Itself.     I  say  that  just  this  contrast  between 
Paul's  doctrine  and  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
although    perfectly   familiar,   has    been  neg- 

75 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

lected  by  students  of  our  problem.     Let  me 
briefly  show  what  I  have  in  mind. 

The  best-known  and,  for  multitudes,  the 
most  directly  moving  of  the  words  which  tradi- 
tion attributes  to  Jesus,  describe  the  duty  of 
man,  the  essence  of  religion,  and  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  itself,  in  terms  of  the  conception  of 
Christian  love.  I  have  not  here  either  the 
time  or  the  power  adequately  to  expound  this 
the  chief  amongst  the  doctrines  which  tradi- 
tion ascribes  directly  to  Jesus.  I  must  pass 
over  what  countless  loving  and  fit  teachers 
have  made  so  familiar.  Yet  I  must  remind 
you  of  two  features  of  Christ's  doctrine  of 
love  which  at  this  point  especially  concern 
our  own  enterprise. 

First,  it  is  needful  for  me  to  point  out  that, 
despite  certain  stubborn  and  widespread  mis- 
understandings, the  Christian  doctrine  of 
love,  as  that  doctrine  appears  in  the  parables 
and  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  involves 
and  emphasizes  a  very  positive  and  active\ 
and  heroic  attitude  towards  life,  and  is  not, 
as  some  have  supposed,  a  negative  doctrine  of  | 

76 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

f  passive  self-surrender.  And  secondly,  I  must 
also  bring  to  your  attention  the  fact  that  the 
Master's  teaching  about  love  leaves  unsolved 
certain  practical  problems,  problems  which 
this  very  heroism  and  this  positive  tendency 
of  the  doctrine  make  by  contrast  all  the  more 
striking. 

These  unsolved  problems  of  the  reported 
teaching  of  Jesus  about  love  seem  to  have 
been  deliberately  brought  before  us  by  the 
Master,  and  as  deliberately  left  unsolved. 
The  way  was  thus  opened  for  a  further  de- 
velopment of  what  the  Master  chose  to  teach. 
And  such  further  development  was  presum- 
ably  a  part  of  what  the  founder  more  or  less 
consciously  foresaw  and  intended. 

The  grain  of  mustard  seed  —  so  his  faith 
assured  him  —  must  grow.  To  that  end  it  was 
planted.  Now  a  part  of  the  new  growth,  a 
contribution  to  the  treatment  of  the  problems 
which  the  original  teaching  about  love  left 
unsolved,  was,  in  the  sequel,  due  to  Paul. 
This  sequel,  whether  the  Master  foresaw  it  or 
not,  is  as  important  for  the  further  office  of 

77 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Christianity  as  the  original  teaching  was  an 
indispensable  beginning  of  the  process.  Jesus 
awaited  in  trust  a  further  revelation  of  the 
Father's  mind.  Such  a  new  light  came  in  due 
season. 

Two  features,  then,  of  the  doctrine  of  love 
as  taught  by  Jesus,  —  its  impressively  positive 
and  active  character,  and  the  mystery  of  its 
unsolved    problems,  —  these    two    we    must 
next  emphasize.     Then  we  shall  be  ready  to 
take  note  of  a  further  matter  which  also  con- 
cerns us,  —  namely,  Paul's  new  contribution 
to  the  solution  of  the  very  problems  concern- 
ing love  which  the  parables  and  the  sayings  of 
Jesus  had  left  unsolved.     This  new  contribu- 
tion,—  Paul    himself   conceived    not    as   his   * 
own  personal  invention,    '^or  he  held  that  the 
new  teaching  was  due  to  the  spirit  of  his  risen 
and  ascended  Lord.     What  concerns  us  is  that 
Paul's  additional  thought  was  a  critical  in- 
fluence in  determining  both  the  evolution  and 
the  permanent  meaning  of  Christianity. 


78 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 


VIII 

The  love  which  Jesus  preached  has  often 
been  misunderstood.     Critics,  as  well  as  mis- 
taken friends  of  the  Master's  teachings,  have 
supposed  Christian  love  to  be  more  or  less 
completely  identical  with  self-abnegation,  -  u 
with  the  amiably  negative  virtue  of  one  who, 
as  the  misleading  modern  phrase  expresses  the 
matter,  "has  no  thought  of  se'f."    Another  ^ 
modern  expression,  also  misleading,  is  used  by 
some   who   identify   Christian   love   with   so- 
called  -pure  altruism."     The  ideal  Christian,  J 
as   such   people   interpret   his   virtue,    "Hves 
wholly  for  others."     That  is  what  is  meant  by 
the  spirit  which  resists  not  evil,  which  turns 
the  other  cheek  to  the  smiter,  which  forgives, 
and  pities,  and  which  abandons  all  worldly 
goods. 

Now,  against  such  misunderstandings, 
many  of  the  wiser  expounders  of  Christian 
doctrine,  both  in  former  times  and  in  our 
own,  have  taken  pains  to  show  that  love,  as 
the  Jesus  of  the  sayings  and  of  the  parables 

79 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

conceived  it,  does  not  consist  in  mere  self- 
abnegation,  and  is  not  identical  with  pure 
altruism,  and  is  both  heroic  and  positive. 
The  feature  of  the  Master's  doctrine  of  love 
which  renders  this  more  positive  and  heroic 
interpretation  of  the  sayings  inevitable,  is 
the  familiar  reason  which  is  laid  at  the  basis 
of  his  whole  teaching.  One  is  to  love  one's 
neighbor  because  God  himself,  as  Father, 
divinely  loves  and  prizes  each  individual  man. 
Hence  the  individual  man  has  an  essentially 
infinite  value,  although  he  has  this  value  only 
in  and  through  his  relation  to  God,  and  be- 
cause of  God's  love  for  him.  Therefore  mere 
self-abnegation  cannot  be  the  central  virtue. 
For  the  Jesus  of  the  sayings  not  only  rejoices 
in  the  divine  love  whereof  every  man  is  the 
object,  but  also  invites  every  man  to  rejoice 
in  the  consciousness  of  this  very  love,  and  to 
delight  also  in  all  men,  since  they  are  God's 
beloved.  The  man  whom  this  love  of  God 
is  to  transform  into  a  perfect  lover  cannot 
henceforth  merely  forget  or  abandon  the  self. 
The  parable  of  the  servant  who,  although  him- 

80 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 
self  forgiven  by  his  Lord,  will  not  forgive  his 
fellow-servant,  shows   indeed   how   worthless 
self-assertion  is  when  separated  from  a  sense 
that  all  are  equally  dependent  upon  God's 
love.     But  the  parable  of  the  talents  shows 
with  equal  clearness  how  stern  the  demands  of 
the  divine  love  are  in  requiring  the  individual 
to  find  a  perfectly  positive  expression  of  the 
unique  value  which   it  is  his  office,  and   his 
alone,    to    return    to    his    Lord    with    usuiy 
Every  man,  this  self  included,  has  just  such 
an   unique   value,   and   must   be   so   viewed. 
Hence  the  sayings  are  full  of  calls  to  self-ex- 
pression, and  so  to  heroism.     Love  is  divine  • 
and  therefore  it  includes  an  assertion  of  its' 
own   divinity;    and    therefore   it   can   never 
be  mere  self-abnegation.     Christian  altruism 
never  takes  the  form  of  saying,   "I  myself  ^ 
ought  to  be  or  become  nothing;    while  only 
the  others  are  to  be  served  and  saved."     For 
the  God  who  loves  me  demands  not  that  I 
should  be  nothing,  but  that  I  should  be  his 
own.     Love  is  never  merely  an  amiable  toler- 
ance of  whatever  form  human  frailty  and  folly 
•  81 


\ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

may  take.     To  be  sure,  the  lover,  as  Jesus 
depicts  him,  resists  not  evil,  and  turns  his 
cheek  to  the  smiter.     Yes,  but  he  does  this 
with  full  confidence  that  God  sees  all  and  will 
vindicate  his  servant.     The  lover  vividly  an- 
ticipates the  positive  triumph  of  all  the  right- 
eous ;  and  so  his  love  for  even  the  least  of  the 
little  ones  is,  in  anticipation,  an  active  and 
strenuous  sharing  in  the  final  victory  of  God's 
will.     His    very    non-resistance    is    therefore 
inspired  by  a  divine  contempt  for  the  powers 
of  evil.     Why  should  one  resist  who  always 
has  on  his  side  and  in  his  favor  the  power  that 
is  irresistible,  that  loves  him,  and  that  will 
triumph  even  through  his  weakness  ? 

Such  a  spirit  renders  pity  much  more  than 
a  mere  absorption  in  attempting  to  relieve 
the  misery  of  others.  Sympathy  for  the 
sufferer,  as  the  sayings  of  Jesus  depict  it,  is 
but  an  especially  pathetic  illustration  of  one's 
serene  confidence  that  the  Father  who  cares 
for  all  triumphs  over  all  evil,  so  that  when  we 
feel  pity  and  act  pitifully,  we  take  part  in  this 
divine  triumph.     Hence  pity  is  no  mere  ten- 

82 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

derness.     It  is  a  sharing  in  the  victory  that 
overcomes  the  world. 

Such,  then,  in  brief,  is  the  doctrine  of  Chris- 
tian love  as  the  sayings  and  the  parables  con- 
tam  it,  —  a  doctrine  as  positive  and  strenuous 
as  it  is  humane,  and  as  it  is  sure  of  the  Father's 
good  will   and   overruling  power.     So   far   I 
indeed  merely  remind  you  of  what  all  the 
wiser  expounders  of  Christian  doctrine,  what- 
ever their  theology   or   their  disagreements, 
have,  on  the  whole,  and  despite  popular  mis- 
understandings, agreed  in  recognizing.     And 
hereupon  you  might  well  be  disposed  to  ask : 
Is  not  this,  in  spirit  and  in  essence,  the  deepest 
meaning,  —  yes,  is  it  not  really  the  whole  of 
Christianity  ?    What  did  Paul  do,  what  could 
he  do,  when  he  spoke  of  love,  but  repeat  this, 
the  Master's  doctrine  ? 


IX 

In  answer  to  this  question,  we  must  next 
note  that,  over  against  this  clear  and  posi- 
tive definition  of  the  spiritual  attitude  that 
Jesus  attributes  to  the  Christian  lover,  there 

83 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

stand  certain  problems  which  come  to  mind 
when  we  ask  for  more  precise  directions  re- 
garding what  the  lover  is  to  do  for  the  object 
of  his  love.  Love  is  concerned  not  only  with 
the  lover's  inner  inspiration,  but  with  the 
services  that  he  is  to  perform  for  the  beloved. 
Now,  in  the  world  in  which  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  places  the  Christian  lover,  love  has 
two  objects,  —  God  and  one's  neighbor. 
What  is  one  to  do  in  order  to  express  one's 
love  for  each  of  these  objects  ? 

So  far  as  concerns  the  lover's  relation  to 
God,  the  answer  is  clear,  and  is  stated  wholly 
in  religious  terms.  Purity  of  heart  in  loving, 
perfect  sincerity  and  complete  devotion,  the 
heroism  of  spirit  just  described,  —  these, 
with  complete  trust  in  God,  with  utter  sub- 
mission to  the  Father's  will,  —  these  are  the 
services  that  the  lover  can  render  to  God. 
In  these  there  is  no  merit;  for  they  are  as 
nothing  in  comparison  with  one's  debt  to  the 
Father.  But  they  are  required.  And  in  so 
far  the  doctrine  of  love  is  made  explicit  and 
the  rule  of  righteousness  is  definite. 

84 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

But  now  let  us  return  to  the  relation  of  love 
to  the  services  that  one  is  to  oflFer  to  one's 
neighbor.  What  can  the  lover,  —  in  so  far  as 
Jesus  describes  his  task,  —  what  can  he  do  for 
his  fellow-man  ? 

To  this  question  it  is,  indeed,  possible  to  give 
one  answer  which  clearly  defines  a  duty  to 
the  neighbor;  and  this  duty  is  emphasized 
throughout  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  This  duty 
is  the  requirement  to  use  all  fitting  means,  — 
example,  precept,  kindliness,  non-resistance, 
heroism,  patience,  courage,  strenuousness, — 
all  means  that  tend  to  make  the  neighbor 
himself  one  of  the  lovers.  The  first  duty  of 
love  is  to  produce  love,  to  nourish  it,  to  extend 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  by  teaching  love  to 
all  men.  And  this  service  to  one's  neighbor 
is  a  clearly  definable  service.  And  so  far  the 
love  of  the  neighbor  involves  no  unsolved 
problems. 

But  in  sharp  contrast  with  this  aspect  of 
the  doctrine  of  love  stands  another  aspect, 
which  is  indeed  problematic.  In  addition  to 
the  extension   of    the  loving  spirit    through 

85 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

stand  certain  problems  which  come  to  mind 
when  we  ask  for  more  precise  directions  re- 
garding what  the  lover  is  to  do  for  the  object 
of  his  love.  Love  is  concerned  not  only  with 
the  lover's  inner  inspiration,  but  with  the 
services  that  he  is  to  perform  for  the  beloved. 
Now,  in  the  world  in  which  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  places  the  Christian  lover,  love  has 
two  objects,  —  God  and  one's  neighbor. 
What  is  one  to  do  in  order  to  express  one's 
love  for  each  of  these  objects  ? 

So  far  as  concerns  the  lover's  relation  to 
God,  the  answer  is  clear,  and  is  stated  wholly 
in  religious  terms.  Purity  of  heart  in  loving, 
perfect  sincerity  and  complete  devotion,  the 
heroism  of  spirit  just  described,  —  these, 
with  complete  trust  in  God,  with  utter  sub- 
mission to  the  Father's  will,  —  these  are  the 
services  that  the  lover  can  render  to  God. 
In  these  there  is  no  merit;  for  they  are  as 
nothing  in  comparison  with  one's  debt  to  the 
Father.  But  they  are  required.  And  in  so 
far  the  doctrine  of  love  is  made  explicit  and 
the  rule  of  righteousness  is  definite. 

84 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

But  now  let  us  return  to  the  relation  of  love 
to  the  services  that  one  is  to  offer  to  one's 
neighbor.  What  can  the  lover,  —  in  so  far  as 
Jesus  describes  his  task,  —  what  can  he  do  for 
his  fellow-man  ? 

To  this  question  it  is,  indeed,  possible  to  give 
one  answer  which  clearly  defines  a  duty  to 
the  neighbor;  and  this  duty  is  emphasized 
throughout  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  This  duty 
is  the  requirement  to  use  all  fitting  means,  — 
example,  precept,  kindliness,  non-resistance, 
heroism,  patience,  courage,  strenuousness, — 
all  means  that  tend  to  make  the  neighbor 
himself  one  of  the  lovers.  The  first  duty  of 
love  is  to  produce  love,  to  nourish  it,  to  extend 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  by  teaching  love  to 
all  men.  And  this  service  to  one's  neighbor 
is  a  clearly  definable  service.  And  so  far  the 
love  of  the  neighbor  involves  no  unsolved 
problems. 

But  in  sharp  contrast  with  this  aspect  of 
the  doctrine  of  love  stands  another  aspect, 
which  is  indeed  problematic.  In  addition  to 
the  extension   of    the   loving  spirit    through 

85 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

example  and  precept,  the  lover  of  his  neighbor 
has  on  his  hands  the  whole  problem  of  humane 
and  benevolent  practical  activity,  —  the  prob- 
lem of  the  positively  philanthropic  life. 

The    doctrine    of    love,  —  so    positive,    so 
active,  so  resolute  in  its  inmost  spirit,  —  might 
naturally  be  expected  to  give  in  detail  coun- 
sel regarding  what  to  do  for  the  personal  needs 
of  the  lover's  fellow-man.     But,  at  this  point, 
we  indeed  meet  the  more  baffling  side  of  the 
doctrine   of   love.     Jesus   has   no    system  of 
rules  to  expound  for  guiding  the  single  acts 
of  the  philanthropic  life.     Apart  from  insisting 
upon  the  loving  spirit,  apart  from  the  one 
rule  to  extend  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  and 
to  propagate  this  spirit  of  love  among  men, 
the  Master  leaves  the  practical  decisions  of 
the   lover   to   be   guided   by   loving   instinct 
rather  than  by  a  conscious  doctrine  regarding 
what  sort  of  special  good  one  can  do  to  one's 
neighbor. 

Thus  the  original  doctrine  of  love,  as  taught 
in  the  parables,  involves  no  definite  pro- 
gramme for  social  reform,  and  leaves  us  in  the 

86 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

presence  of  countless  unsolved  practical  issues. 
This  is  plainly  a  deliberate  limitation  to  which 
the  Master  chose  to  subject  his  explanations 
about  love. 

Jesus  tells  us  of  many  conditions  that  ap- 
pear necessary  to  the  practical  living  of  the 
life  of  love  for  one's  neighbor.  But  when  we 
ask :  Are  these  conditions  not  only  necessary 
but  sufficient.^  we  are  often  left  in  doubt. 
Love  relieves  manifest  suffering,  when  it  can ; 
love  feeds  the  hungry,  clothes  the  naked ;  — 
in  brief,  love  seems,  at  first  sight,  simply  to 
offer  to  the  beloved  neighbor  whatever  that 
neighbor  himself  most  desires.  It  is  easy  to 
interpret  the  golden  rule  in  this  simple  way. 
Yet  we  know,  and  the  author  of  the  parables 
well  knows  and  often  tells  us,  that  the  natural 
man  desires  many  things  that  he  ought  not  to 
desire  and  that  love  ought  not  to  give  him. 
Since  the  life  is  more  than  meat,  it  also  follows 
that  feeding  the  hungry  and  clothing  the  naked 
are  not  acts  which  really  supply  what  man 
most  needs.  The  natural  man  does  not  know 
his  own  true  needs.     Hence  the  golden  rule 

87 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

does  not  tell  us  in  detail  what  to  do  for  him, 
but  simply  expresses  the  spirit  of  love.  What 
is  sure  about  love  is  that  it  indeed  unites  the 
lover,  in  spirit,  to  God's  will.  ^What  consti- 
tutes, in  this  present  world,  the  pathos,  the 
tragedy  of  love,  is  that,  because  our  neighbor 
is  so  mysterious  a  being  to  our  imperfect 
vision,  we  do  not  now  know  how  to  make  him 
happy,  to  relieve  his  deepest  distresses,  to  do 
him  the  highest  good}  so  that  most  loving  acts, 
such  as  giving  the  cup  of  cold  water,  and 
helping  the  sufferer  who  has  fallen  by  the  way- 
side, seem,  to  our  more  thoughtful  moods,  to 
be  mere  symbols  of  what  love  would  do  if  it 
could,  —  mere  hints  of  the  active  life  that  love 
would  lead  if  it  were  directly  and  fully  guided 
by  the  Father's  wisdom. 

Modern  philanthropy  has  learned  to  de- 
velop a  technically  clearer  consciousness  about 
this  problem  of  effective  benevolence,  and  has 
made  familiar  the  distinction  between  loving 
one's  neighbor,  and  finding  out  how  to  be 
practically  useful  in  meeting  the  neighbor's 
needs.     Hence,  sometimes,  the  modern  mind 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

wonders  how  to  apply  the  spirit  of  the  parables 
to  our  special  problems  of  benevolence,  and 
questions  whether,  and  in  what  sense,  the 
original  Gospel  furnishes  guidance  for  our 
own  modern  social  consciousness. 

The  problems  thus  barely  suggested  are  in- 
deed in  a  sense  answered,  so  far  as  the  origi- 
nally reported  teaching  of  Jesus  is  concerned, 
but  are  answered  by  a  consideration  which 
awakens  a  new  call  for  further  interpretation. 
The  parables  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
emphasize,  in  the  present  connection,  two 
things:  First,  that  it  is  indeed  the  business 
of  every  lover  of  his  neighbor  to  help  other 
men  by  rendering  them  also  lovers ;  and  sec- 
ondly that,  as  to  other  matters,  one  who  tries 
to  help  his  neighbor  must  leave  to  God,  to 
the  all-loving  Father,  the  care  for  the  true 
and  final  good  of  the  neighbor  whom  one 
loves.  Since  the  judgment  day  is  near,  in 
the  belief  of  Jesus  and  of  his  hearers,  since 
the  final  victory  of  the  Kingdom  will  erelong 
be  miraculously  manifested,  the  lover,  so 
Jesus  seems  to  hold,  can  wait.     It  is  his  task 

89 


THE  PROBLEM    OF   CHRISTIANITY 

to  use  his  talent  as  he  can,  to  be  ready  for  his 
Lord's  appearance,  and  to  be  strenuous  in 
the  spirit  of  love.  But  the  God  who  cares  for 
the  sparrows  will  care  for  the  success  of  love. 
It  is  simply  not  the  lover's  task  to  set  this 
present  world  right ;  it  is  his  only  to  act  in  the 
spirit  that  is  the  Father's  spirit,  and  that, 
when  revealed  and  triumphant,  at  the  judg- 
ment day,  will  set  all  things  right.  In  this 
way  the  heroism  of  the  ideal  of  the  Kingdom 
is  perfectly  compatible,  in  the  parables,  with 
an  attitude  of  resignation  with  regard  to  the 
means  whereby  the  ideal  is  to  be  accomplished. 
fSerene  faith  as  to  the  result,  strenuousness  as 
to  the  act,  whatever  it  is,  which  the  loving 
spirit  just  now  prompts  :  this  is  the  teaching 
of  the  parables.  N 

I  have  said  that  the  world  of  the  parables 
contains  two  beings  to  whom  Christian  love 
is  owed :  God  and  the  neighbor.  Both,  as 
you  now  see,  are  mysterious.  The  serene 
faith  of  the  Master  sets  one  mystery  side  by 
side  with  the  other,  bids  the  disciple  lay  aside 
all  curious  peering  into  what  is  not  yet  re- 

90 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

vealed  to  the  loving  soul,  and  leaves  to  the 
near  future,  —  to  the  coming  end  of  the  world, 
—  the  lifting  of  all  veils  and  the  reconciliation 
of  all  conflicts. 


Such,  then,  are  the  problems  of  the  doctrine 
of  love  which  the  Master  brings  ^to  light,  but 
does  not  answer.  Our  next  question  is  :  What 
does  Paul  contribute  to  this  doctrine  of  love  ? 

Paul  indeed  repeated  many  of  his  Master's 
word^concerning  love  ^  and  he  everywhere  is 
in  full  agreement  with  their  spirit.  And  yet 
this  agreement  is  accompanied  by  a  perfectly 
inevitable  further  development  of  the  doctrine 
of  Christian  love,  —  a  development  which  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  into  the  world  of  Paul's 
religious  life  and  teaching  there  has  entered, 
not  onl^  a  new  experience,  but  a  new  sort  of 
being,  —  a  real  object  w  hereof  the  Master 
had  not  made  explicit  mention. 

God.  and  the  neighbor  are  beings  whose 
general  type  religion  and  common  sense  had 
made    familiar    long    before    Jesus    taught, 

91 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

mysterious  though  God  and  one's  neighbor 
were  to  the  founder's  hearers,  and  still  re- 
main to  ourselves.  Both  of  them  are  con- 
ceived by  the  religious  consciousness  of  the 
parables  as  personal  beings,  and  as  individuals. 
God  is  the  supreme  ruler  who,  as  Christ 
conceives  him,  is  also  an  individual  person, 
and  who  loves  and  wills.  The  neighbor  is  the 
concrete  human  being  of  daily  life. 

But  the  new,  the  third  being,  in  Paul's 
religious  world,  seems  to  the  Apostle  himself 
novel  in  its  type,  and  seems  to  him  to  possess 
a  nature  involving  what  he  more  than  once 
calls  a  "mystery."  To  express,  so  far  as  he 
may,  this  "mystery,"  he  uses  characteristic 
metaphors,  which  have  become  classic. 

This  new  being  is  a  corporate  entity,— 
the  body  of  Christ,  or  the  body  of  which  the 
now  divinely  exalted  Christ  is  the  head.  Of 
this  body  the  exalted  Christ  is  also,  for  Paul, 
the  spirit  and  also,  in  some  new  sense,  the 
lover.  This  corporate  entity  is  the  Christian 
community  itself. 

Perfectly  familiar  is  the  fact  that  the  exist- 

92 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 


ence  and  the  idea  of  this  community  constitute 
a  new  beginning  in  the  evolution  of  Christian- 
ity. But  neglected,  as  I  think  and  as  I  have 
just  asserted,  is  the  subtle  and  momentous 
transformation,  the  great  development  which 
this  new  motive  brings  to  pass  in  the  Pauline 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  Christian  love. 

What  most  interests  us  here,  and  what  is 
least  generally  understfefed,  I  think,  by  stu- 
dents of  the  problem  of  Christianity,  is  the  fact 
that  this  new  entity,  this  corporate  sort  of 
reality  which  Paul  so  emphasizes,  this  being 
which  is  not  an  individual  man  but  a  com- 
munity, does  not,  as  one  might  suppose, 
render  the  Apostle's  doctrine  of  love  more 
abstract,  more  remote  from  human  life, 
less  direct  and  less  moving,  than  was  the  orig- 
inal doctrine  of  love  in  the  parables.  On  the 
contrary,  the  new  element  makes  the  doctrine 
of  love  more  concrete,  and,  as  I  must  insist, 
really  less  mysterious.  In  speaking  of  this 
corporate  entity,  the  Apostle  uses  metaphors, 
and  knows  that  they  are  metaphors ;  but,  ^ 
despite    what    the    Apostle    calls    the    new 

93 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   CHRISTIANITY 


"mystery,"  these  metaphors  explain  much 
that  the  parables  left  doubtful.  These  meta- 
phors do  not  hide,  as  the  Master,  in  using  the 
form  of  the  parable,  occasionally  intended 
for  the  time  to  hide  from  those  who  were  not 
yet  ready  for  the  full  revelation,  truths  which 
the  future  was  to  make  clearer  to  the  disciples. 
No,  Paul's  metaphors  regarding  the  com- 
munity of  the  faithful  in  the  Church  bring  the 
first  readers  of  Paul's  epistles  into  direct 
contact  with  the  problems  of  their  own  daily 
religious  life. 

The  corporate  entity  —  the  Christian  com- 
munity —  proves  to  be,  for  Paul's  religious 
consciousness,  something  more  concrete  than 
is  the  individual  fellow-man.  The  question  : 
Who  is  my  neighbor  ?  had  been  answered  by 
the  Master  by  means  of  the  parable  of  the 
Good  Samaritan.  But  that  question  itself 
had  not  been  due  merely  to  the  hardness  of 
heart  of  the  lawyer  who  asked  it.  The  prob- 
lem of  the  neighbor  actually  involves  mys- 
teries which,  as  we  have  already  seen  and 
hereafter  shall  still  further  see,  the  parables 

94 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 


deliberately  leave,  along  with  the  conception 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  itself,  to  be  made 
clearer  only  when  the  new  revelation,  for  which 
the  parables  are  preparing  the  way,  shall  have 
been  granted.  Now  Paul  feels  himself  to  be 
in  possession  of  a  very  precious  part  of  this 

further  revelation.  He  has  discovered,  in  his 
own  experience  as  Apostle,  a  truth  that  he 
feels  to  be  new.  He  believes  this  truth  to  be 
a  revelation  due  to  the  spirit  of  his  Lord. 

In  fact,  the  Apostle  has  discovered  a  special   | 
instance  of  one  of  the  most  significant  of  all 
moral  and  religious  truths,  the  truth  that  a    I 
community,    when    unified    by  an  active   in- 
dwelling purpose,  is  an  entity  more  concrete     i 
and,    in   fact,    less    mysterious   than    is   any      \ 
individual  man,  and  that  such  a  community 
can  love  and  be  loved  as  a  husband  and  wife    I 
love;    or  as  father  or  mother  loves. 

Because  the  particular  corporate  entity 
whose  cause  Paul  represents,  namely,  the 
Christian  community,  is  in  his  own  experience 
something  new,  whose  origin  he  views  as 
wholly    mraculous,  \whose    beginnings    and 

95 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

whose  daily  life  are  bound  up  with  the  influ- 
ence which  he  believes  to  be  due  to  the  spirit 
of  his  risen  and  ascended  Lord,  Paul  indeed  re- 
gards the  Church  as  a  '*  mystery^  But,  as  a 
fact,  his  whole  doctrine  regarding  the  com- 
munity has  a  practical  concreteness,  a  clear 
common  sense  about  it,  such  that  he  is  able 
to  restate  the  doctrine  of  Christian  love  so  as 
to  be  fully  just  to  all  its  active  heroism,  while 
interpreting  much  which  the  parables  left 
problematic. 

XI 

What  can  I  do  for  my  neighbor's  good? 
The  parables  had  answered:  "Love  him, 
help  him  in  his  obvious  and  bitter  needs, 
teach  him  the  spirit  of  love,  and  leave  the 
rest  to  God."  Does  Paul  make  light  of  this 
teaching?  On  the  contrary,  his  hymn  in 
honor  of  love,  in  the  first  epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians, is  one  of  Christianity's  principal  treas- 
ures. Nowhere  is  the  real  consequence  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  love  more 
completely    stated.     But  notice    ^.his    differ- 

96 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

ence:  For  Paul  the  neighbor  has  now  be- 
come a  being  who  is  primarily  the  fellow-mem- 
ber of  the  Christian  community. 

The  Christian  community  is  itself  something 
visible ;  miraculously  guided  by  the  Master's 
spirit.  It  is  at  once  for  the  Apostle  a  fact  of 
present  experience  and  a  divine  creation. 
And  therefore  every  word  about  love  for  the 
neighbor  is  in  the  Apostle's  teaching  at  once 
perfectly  direct  and  human  in  its  effectiveness 
and  is  nevertheless  dominated  by  the  spirit 
of  a  new  and,  as  Paul  believes,  a  divinely 
inspired  love  for  the  community. 

Both   the  neighbor  and   the  lover  of  the  | 
neighbor  to  whom  the   Apostle  appeals  are, 
to  his  mind,  members  of  the  body  of  Christ ; 
and  all  the  value  of  each  man  as  an  individual 
is  bound  up  with  his  membership  in  this  body,\ 
and  with  his  love  for  the  community. 

Jesus  had  taught  that  God  loves  the  neigh- 
bor, —  yes,  even  the  least  of  these  little  ones. 
Paul  says  to  the  Ephesians :  *' Christ  loved 
the  church,  and  gave  himself  up  for  it,  that  he 
might  sanctify  it ;  .  .  .  that  he  might  present 
H  97 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  church  to  himself  a  glorious  church,  not 
having    spot:  ...  but    that    it    should    be 
holy  and  without  blemish."     One  sees :     The 
object  of  the  divine  love,  as  Paul  conceives  it, 
has  been  at  once  transformed  and   fulfilled. 
In  God's  love  for  the  neighbor,  the  par- 
ables find  the  proof  of  the  infinite  worth  of 
the    individual.     In    Christ's    love    for    the 
Church  Paul  finds  the  proof  that  both  the 
community,  and  the  individual  member,  are 
the    objects    of    an    infinite    concern,    which 
glorifies  them  both,  and  thereby  unites  them. 
The  member  finds  his  salvation  only  in  union 
with  the  Church.     He,  the  member,  would 
be  dead  without  the  divine  spirit  and  without 
the  community.     But  the  Christ  whose  com- 
munity this  is,  has  given  life  to  the  members, 
—  the  life  of  the  Church,  and  of  Christ  him- 
self.    ''You  hath  he  quickened,  which  were 
dead  in  trespasses  and  sins." 
I       In  sum  :  Christian  love,  as  Paul  conceives  it, 
takes  on  the  form  of  Loyalty.     This  is  Paul's 
simple  but  vast  transformation  of  Christian 


love. 


96 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

Loyalty  itself  was,  in  the  history  of  human- 
ity, already,  at  that  time,  ancient.  It  had  ex- 
isted in  all  tribes  and  peoples  that  knew  what 
it  was  for  the  individual  so  to  love  his  com- 
munity as  to  glory  in  living  and  dying  for 
that  community.  To  conceive  virtue  as  faith- 
fulness to  one's  community,  was,  in  so  far, 
no  new  thing.  Loyalty,  moreover,  had  long 
tended  towards  a  disposition  to  enlarge  both 
itself  and  its  community.  As  the  world  had 
come  together,  it  had  gradually  become  pos- 
sible for  philosophers,  such  as  the  later  Stoics, 
to  conceive  of  all  humanity  as  in  ideal  one 
community. 

Although  this  was  so  far  a  too  abstract  con- 
ception to  conquer  the  world  of  contending 
powers,  the  spirit  of  loyalty  was  also  not 
without  its  religious  relationships,  and  tended, 
as  religion  tended,  to  make  the  moral  realm 
appear,  not  only  a  world  of  human  communi- 
ties, but  a  world  of  divinely  ordained  unity. 
Meanwhile,  upon  every  stage,  long  before  the 
Christian  virtues  were  conceived,  loyalty  had 
inspired  nations  of  warriors  with  the  sternest 

99 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  their  ideals  of  heroism,  and  with  their 
noblest  visions  of  the  destiny  of  the  individual. 
And  the  prophets  of  Israel  had  indeed  con- 
ceived the  Israel  of  God's  ultimate  triumph 
as  a  community  in  and  through  which  all 
men  should  know  God  and  be  blessed. 

But  in  Paul's  teaching,  loyalty,  quickened 
to  new  life,  not  merely  by  hope,  but  by  the 
presence  of  a  community  in  whose  meetings 
the  divine  spirit  seemed  to  be  daily  working 
fresh  wonders,  keeps  indeed  its  natural  rela- 
tion to  the  militant  virtues,  is  heroic  and  stren- 
uous, and  delights  to  use  metaphors  derived 
from  the  soldier's  life.  It  appears  also  as  the 
virtue  of  those  who  love  order,  and  who  pre- 
fer law  to  anarchy,  and  who  respect  worldly 
authority.  And  it  derives  its  religious  ideas 
from  the  prophets. 

But  it  also  becomes  the  fulfilment  of  what 
Jesus  had  taught  in  the  parables  concerning 
love.  For  the  Apostle,  this  loyalty  unites  to 
all  these  stern  and  orderly  and  militant  traits, 
and  to  all  that  the  prophets  had  dreamed 
about  Israel's  triumph,  the  tenderness  of  a 

100 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

brother's  love  for  the  individual  brother. 
Consequently,  in  Paul's  mind,  love  for  the  ' 
individual  human  being,  and  loyalty  to  the 
divine  community  of  all  the  faithful;  gra- 
ciousness  of  sentiment,  and  orderliness  of  dis- 
cipline ;  are  so  directly  interwoven  that  each 
interprets  and  glorifies  the  other.  ^ 

If  the  Corinthians  unlovingly  contend, 
brother  with  brother,  concerning  their  gifts, 
Paul  tells  them  about  the  body  of  Christ, 
and  about  the  divine  unity  of  its  spirit  in  all 
the  diversity  of  its  members  and  of  their 
powers.  On  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  loyalty  to 
the  Church  which  is  to  be  interpreted  and 
revivified,  Paul  pictures  the  dignity  of  the 
spiritual  community  in  terms  of  the  direct 
beauty  and  sweetness  and  tenderness  of  the 
love  of  brother  for  brother,  —  that  love  which 
seeketh  not  her  own. 

The  perfect  union  of  this  inspired  passion 
for  the  community,  with  this  tender  fond- 
ness for  individuals,  is  at  once  the  secret  of 
the  Apostle's  power  as  a  missionary  and  the 
heart  of  his  new  doctrine.     Of  loyalty  to  the 

101 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


spirit  and  to  the  body  of  Christ,  he  discourses 
in  his  most  abstruse  as  well  as  in  his  most 
eloquent  passages.  But  his  letters  close  with 
the  well-known  winning  and  tender  messages 
to  and  about  individual  members  and  about 
their  intimate  personal   concerns. 

As  to  the  question:  "What  shall  I  do  for 
my  brother.'^"  Paul  has  no  occasion  to 
answer  that  question  except  in  terms  of  the 
brother's  relations  to  the  community.  But 
just  for  that  reason  his  counsels  can  be  as 
concrete  and  definite  as  each  individual  case 
requires  them  to  be.  Because  the  community, 
as  Paul  conceives  it,  —  the  small  community 
of  a  Pauline  church,  —  keeps  all  its  members 
in  touch  with  one  another;  because  its 
harmony  is  preserved  through  definite  plans 
for  setting  aside  the  differences  that  arise 
amongst  individuals;  because,  by  reason  of 
the  social  life  of  the  whole,  the  physical 
needs,  the  perils,  the  work,  the  prosperity  of 
the  individual  are  all  made  obvious  facts  of 
the  common  experience  of  the  church,  and 
are  all  just  as  obviously  and  definitely  related 

102 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

to  the  health  of  the  whole  body, — Paul's  gospel 
of  love  has  constant  and  concrete  practical 
applications  to  the  life  of  those  whom  he  ad- 
dresses. The  ideal  of  the  parables  has  be- 
come a  visible  life  on  earth.  So  live  together 
that  the  Church  may  be  worthy  of  Christ 
who  loves  it,  so  help  the  individual  brother 
that  he  may  be  a  fitting  member  of  the  Church. 
Such  are  now  the  counsels  of  love. 

All  this  teaching  of  Paul  was  accompanied,  I 
of  course,  in  the  Apostle's  own  mind,  by  the  ' 
unquestioning  assurance  that  this  community 
of  the  Christian  faith,  as  he  knew  it  and  in 
his  letters  addressed  its  various  representa- 
tives, was  indeed  a  genuinely  universal  com- 
munity.    It  was  already,  to  his  mind,  what 
the  prophets  had  predicted  when  they  spoke 
of  the  redeemed  Israel.     By  the  grace  of  God, 
all  men  belonged  to  this  community,  or  would 
soon  belong  to  it,  whom  God  was  pleased  toj 
save  at  all. 

For  the  end  of  the  world  was  very  soon  to 
come,  and  would  manifest  its  membership, 
its  divine  head,  and  its  completed  mission. 

103 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

According  to  Paul's  expectation,  there  was  to 

be  no  long  striving  towards  an  ideal  that  in 

• 

time  was  remote.  He  dealt  with  the  interests 
of  all  mankind.  But  his  faith  brought  him 
into  direct  contact  with  the  institution  that 
represented  this  world-wide  interest.  What 
loyalty  on  its  highest  levels  has  repeatedly 
been  privileged  to  imagine  as  the  ideal  brother- 
hood of  all  who  are  loyal,  Paul  found  directly 
presented,  in  his  religious  experience,  as  his 
own  knowledge  of  his  Master's  purpose,  and 
of  its  imminent  fulfilment. 

This  vision  began  to  come  to  Paul  when  he 
was  called  to  be  an  apostle ;  and  later,  when 
he  was  sent  to  the  Gentiles,  the  ideal  grew 
constantly  nearer  and  clearer.  The  Church 
was,  for  Paul,  the  very  presence  of  his  Lord. 

Such,  then,  was  the  first  highly  developed 
Christian  conception  of  the  universal  com- 
munity. That  which  the  deepest  and  highest 
rational  interests  of  humanity  make  most 
desirable  for  all  men,  and  that  which  the 
prophets  of  Israel  had  predicted  afar  off,  the 
religious  experience  of  Paul  brought  before  his 

104 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 


eyes  as  the  daily  work  of  the  spirit  in  the 
Church.  Was  not  Christ  present  whenever 
the  faithful  were  assembled  ?  Was  not  the 
spirit  living  in  their  midst  ?  Was  not  the  day 
of  the  Lord  at  hand  ?  Would  not  they  all 
soon  be  changed,  when  the  last  trumpet 
should  sound  ? 

Our  sketch,  thus  far,  of  the  spirit  of  the 
ideal  of  the  universal  community,  solves  none 
of  our  problems.  But  it  helps  to  define 
them.  This,  the  first  of  our  three  essential 
ideas  of  Christianity,  is  the  idea  of  a  spiritual 
life  in  which  universal  love  for  all  individuals 
shall  be  completely  blended,  practically  har- 
monized, with  an  absolute  loyalty  for  a  real 
and  universal  community.  God,  the  neighbor, 
and  the  one  church:  These  three  are  for 
Paul  the  objects  of  Christian  love  and  the 
inspiration  of  the  life  of  love. 

Paul's  expectations  of  the  coming  judgment 
were  not  realized.  Those  little  apostolic 
churches,  where  the  spirit  daily  manifested 
itself,  gave  place  to  the  historical  church  of 
the  later  centuries,  whose  possession  of  the 

105 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

spirit  has  often  been  a  matter  of  dogma  rather 
than  of  life,  and  whose  unity  has  been  so  often 
lost  to  hunian  view.  The  letter  has  hidden 
the  spirit.  The  Lord  has  delayed  his  coming. 
The  New  Jerusalem,  adorned  as  a  bride  for 
her  husband,  remains  hidden  behind  the 
heavens.  The  vision  has  become  the  Problem 
of  Christianity. 

Our  sketch  has  been  meant  merely  to  help 
us  towards  a  further  definition  of  this  prob- 
lem. To  such  a  definition  our  later  lectures 
must  attempt  still  further  to  contribute. 
We  have  a  hint  of  the  sources  of  the  first  of 
our  three  essential  ideas  of  Christianity.  We 
have  still  to  consider  what  is  the  truth  of 
this  idea.  And  in  order  to  move  towards  an 
answer  to  this  question,  we  shall  be  obliged, 
in  our  immediately  subsequent  lectures,  to 
attempt  a  formulation  of  the  two  other 
essential  ideas  of  Christianity  named  in  our 
introductory  statement. 


106 


III 


THE  MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 


I 


LECTURE  III 

THE  MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

"  A  LL  things  excellent,"  says  Spinoza,  "are 
-^^^  as  difficult  as  they  are  rare;"  and 
Spinoza's  word  here  repeats  a  lesson  that 
nearly  all  of  the  world's  religious  and  moral 
teachers  agree  in  emphasizing.  Whether  such 
a  guide  speaks  simply  of  "excellence,"  or 
uses  the  distinctively  religious  phraseology 
and  tells  us  about  the  way  to  "salvation,"  he 
is  sure,  if  he  is  wise,  to  recognize,  and  on 
occasion  to  say,  that  whoever  is  to  win  the 
highest  goal  must  first  learn  to  bear  a  heavy 
burden.  It  also  belongs  to  the  common  lore 
of  the  sages  to  teach  that  this  burden  is  much 
more  due  to  the  defects  of  our  human  nature 
than  to  the  hostility  of  fortune.  "We  our- 
selves make  our  time  short  for  our  task": 
such  comments  are  as  trite  as  they  are  well 
founded  in  the  facts  of  life. 


109 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 


But  among  the  essential  ideas  of  Chris- 
tianity, there  is  one  which  goes  beyond  this 
common  doctrine  of  the  serious-minded  guides 
of  humanity.  For  this  idea  defines  the  moral 
burden,  to  which  the  individual  who  seeks 
salvation  is  subject,  in  so  grave  a  fashion  that 
many  lovers  of  mankind,  and^  in  particular, 
many  modern  minds,  have  been  led  to  declare 
that  so  much  of  Christian  doctrine,  at  least 
in  the  forms  in  which  it  is  usually  stated,  is 
an  unreasonable  and  untrue  feature  of  the 
faith.  This  idea  I  stated  at  the  close  of  our 
first  lecture,  side  by  side  with  the  two  other 
ideas  of  Christianity  which  I  propose,  in  these 
lectures,  to  discuss.  The  idea  of  the  Church, 
—  of  the  universal  community,  —  which  was 
our  topic  in  the  second  lecture,  is  expressed 
by  the  assertion  that  there  is  a  real  and  di- 
vinely significant  spiritual  community  to  which 
all  must  belong  who  are  to  win  the  true 
goal  of  life.     The  idea  of  the  moral  burden 

no 


I 


MORAL  BURDENOFTHE  INDIVIDUAL 

of  the  individual  is  expressed  by  maintaining 
that  (as  I  ventured  to  state  this  idea  in  my 
own  words) :    "The  individual  human  being 
is  by  nature  subject  to  some  overwhelming 
moral    burden    from    which,    if    unaided,    he  ' 
cannot  escape.     Both   because   of   what  has 
technically  been  called  original  sin,  and  be- 
cause of  the  sins  that  he  himself  has  com- 
mitted, the  individual  is  doomed  to  a  spiritual 
ruin  from  which  only  a  divine  intervention 
can  save  him." 

This  doctrine  constitutes  the  second  of  the 
three  Christian  ideas  that  I  propose  to  dis- 
cuss. I  must  take  it  up  in  the  present 
lecture. 

n 

To  this  mode  of  continuing  our  discussion 
you  may  object  that  our  second  lecture 
left  the  idea  of  the  Church  very  incompletely 
stated,  and,  in  many  most  important  respects, 
also  left  that  idea  uninterpreted,  uncriticised, 
and  not  yet  brought  into  any  clear  relation 
with  the  creed  of  the  modern  man,     Is  it 

m 


THE    PROBLEM    OF   CHRISTIANITY 

well,  you  may  ask,  to  discuss  a  second  one  of 
the  Christian  ideas,  when  the  first  has  not 
yet  been  suflSciently  defined  ? 

I   answer   that   the   three   Christian   ideas 
which  we  have  chosen  for  our  inquiry  are  so 
closely  related  that  each  throws  light  upon 
the  others,  and  in  turn  receives  light  from 
them.     Each  of  these  ideas  needs,  in  some 
convenient   order,   to   be   so   stated   and   so 
illustrated,  and  then  so  made  the  topic  of  a 
thoughtful   reflection,   that   we   shall   hereby 
learn :    First,  about  the  basis  of  this  idea  in 
human   nature;     secondly,   about  its   value, 
—  its  ethical  significance  as  an  interpretation 
of   life;     and   thirdly,    about   its   truth,   and 
about  its  relation  to  the  real  world.     At  the 
close  of  our  survey  of  the  three  ideas,  we  shall 
bring    them    together,  and    thus  form  some 
general   notion   of   what   is   essential   to   the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  viewed  as  a  whole. 
We  shall  at  the  same  time  be  able  to  define 
the  way  in  which  this  Christian  doctrine  of 
life  expresses  certain   actual  needs   of  men, 
and   undertakes   to   meet  these   needs.     We 

112 


^ 
'■^ 


I 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

shall  then  have  grounds  for  estimating  the 
ethical  and  rehgious  value  of  the  connected 
whole  of  the  doctrines  in  question. 

There  will  then  remain  the  hardest  part  of 
our  task:  the  study  of  the  relation  of  these 
Christian  ideas  to  the  real  world.  So  far  as 
we  are  concerned,  this  last  part  of  our  inves- 
tigation will  involve,  in  the  main,  meta- 
physical problems ;  and  the  closing  lectures  of 
our  course  will  therefore  contain  an  outline 
of  the  metaphysics  of  Christianity,  culminat- 
ing in  a  return  to  the  problems  of  the  modern 
man. 

Such  is  our  task.  On  the  way  toward  our 
goal  we  must  be  content,  for  a  time,  with 
fragmentary  views.  They  will,  ere  long,  come 
into  a  certain  unity  with  one  another;  but 
for  that  unity  we  must  wait,  until  each  idea 
has  had  its  own  partial  and  preliminary 
presentation. 

Of  the  idea  of  the  universal  community 

we  have  learned,  thus  far,  two  things,  and 

no    more.     First,    we    have    seen    that    this 

idea  has  a  broad  psychological  basis  in  the 

J  113 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

social  nature  of  mankind,  while  it  gets  its 
ethical  value  from  its  relations  to  the  interests 
and  needs  of  all  those  of  any  time  or  nation 
who  have  learned  what  is  the  deeper  meaning 
of  loyalty.  By  loyalty,  as  you  remember,  I 
mean  the  thoroughgoing,  practical,  and  loving 
devotion  of  a  self  to  an  united  community. 
^  Secondly,  we  have  seen  that,  in  addition 
to  its  general  basis  in  human  nature,  this 
idea  has  its  specifically  Christian  form.  The 
significance  of  this  form  we  have  illustrated 
by  the  way  in  which  the  original  doctrine  of 
Christian  love,  as  Jesus  taught  it  in  his  sayings 
and  parables,  received  not  only  an  applica- 
tion, but  also  a  new  development  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  apostolic  churches,  when 
the  Apostle  Paul  experienced  and  moulded 
their  life. 

The  synthesis  of  the  Master's  doctrine  of 
love  with  the  type  of  loyalty  which  the  life 
of  the  spirit  in  the  Church  taught  Paul  to 
express,  makes  concrete  and  practical  certain 
more  mysterious  aspects  of  the  doctrine  of 
love  which  the  Master  had  taught  in  parables, 

114 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDI  VIDUA  L 

but  had  left  for  a  further  revelation  to  define. 
And  herewith  the  spirit  of  the  Christian  idea 
of  the  universal  community  entered,  as  a 
permanent  possession,  into  the  history  of 
Christianity. 

This  preliminary  study  of  the  idea  of  the 
universal  community  leaves  us  with  countless 
unsolved  problems.     But  it  at  least  shows  us 
where  some  portion  of  our  main  problem  lies. 
The  dogmas  of  the  historical  Church  concern- 
ing its  own  authority  we  have  so  far  left,  in 
our  discussion,  almost  untouched.     That  the 
spirit  and  the  letter  of  this  first  of  our  Chris- 
tian ideas  are  still  very  far  apart,  all  who  love 
mankind,  and  who  regard  Christianity  wisely, 
well  know.     We  have  not  yet  tried  to  show 
how  spirit  and  letter  are  to  be  brought  nearer 
together.     It  has  not  been  my  privilege  to 
tell  you  where  the  true  Church  is  to-day  to  be 
found.     As  a  fact,  I  believe  it  still  to  be  an 
invisible  Church.     And  I  readily  admit  that 
a  disembodied   idea   does   not   meet   all   the 
interests  of  Christianity,  and  does  not  answer 
all  the  questions  of  the  modern  man. 

115 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

But  we  have  yet,  in  due  time,  to  consider 
whether,  and  to  what  extent,  the  universal 
community  is  a  reality.  That  is  a  problem, 
partly  of  dogma,  partly  of  metaphysics.  It 
is  not  my  office  to  supply  the  modern  man, 
or  any  one  else,  with  a  satisfactory  system  of 
dogmas.  But  I  believe  that  philosophy  has 
still  something  to  say  which  is  worth  saying 
regarding  the  sense  in  which  there  really  is 
an  universal  community  such  as  expresses 
what  the  Christian  idea  means.  I  shall 
hereafter  offer  my  little  contribution  to  this 
problem. 

Ill 

Let  us  turn,  then,  to  our  new  topic.  The 
moralists,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out, 
are  generally  agreed  that  whoever  is  to  win 
the  highest  things  must  indeed  learn  to  bear 
a  heavy  moral  burden.  But  the  Christian 
idea  now  in  question  adds  to  the  common 
lore  of  the  moralists  the  sad  word :  "  The 
individual  cannot  bear  this  burden.  His  tainted 
nature    forbids;   his   guilt  weighs  him  down. 

116 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

If  by  salvation  one  means  a  winning  of  the 
true  goal  of  life,  the  individual,  unaided,  can- 
not be  saved.  And  the  help  that  he  needs  for 
bearing  his  burden  must  come  from  some 
source  entirely  above  his  own  level,  —  from 
a  source  which  is,  in  some  genuine  sense, 
divine." 

The  most  familiar  brief  statement  of  the 
present  idea  is  that  of  Paul  in  the  passage  in 
the    seventh    chapter    of    the  epistle  to  the 
Romans,     which     culminates     in    this     cry: 
"O  wretched  man  that  I  am!"     What  the 
Apostle,  in  the  context  of  this  passage,  ex- 
pounds as  his  interpretation  both  of  his  own 
rehgious    experience    and    of    human    nature 
m  general,  has  been  much  more  fully  stated 
in  the  form  of  well-known  doctrines,  and  has 
formed  the  subject-matter  for  ages  of  Chris- 
tian controversy. 

In  working  out  his  own  theory  of  the  facts 
which  he  reports,  Paul  was  led  to  certain  often 
cited  statements  about  the  significance  and 
the  effect  of  Adam's  legendary  transgression. 
And,  as  a  consequence  of  these  words  and  of 

117 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

a  few  other  Pauline  passages,  technical  prob- 
lems regarding  original  sin,  predestination, 
and  related  topics  have  come  to  occupy  so 
large  a  place  in  the  history  of  theology,  that, 
to  many  minds,  Paul's  own  report  of  personal 
experience,  and  his  statements  about  plain 
facts  of  human  nature,  have  been  lost  to 
sight  (so  far  as  concerns  the  idea  of  the 
moral  burden  of  the  individual)  in  a  maze  of 
controversial  complications.  To  numerous 
modern  minds  the  whole  idea  of  the  moral 
burden  of  the  individual  seems,  therefore, 
to  be  an  invention  of  theologians,  and  to 
possess  little  or  no  religious  importance. 

Yet  I  believe  that  such  a  view  is  profoundly 
mistaken.  The  idea  of  the  moral  burden  of 
the  individual  is,  as  we  shall  see,  not  without 
its  inherent  complications,  and  not  without 
its  relation  to  very  difficult  problems,  both 
ethical  and  metaphysical.  Yet,  of  the  three 
essential  ideas  of  Christianity  which  consti- 
tute our  list,  it  is,  relatively  speaking,  the 
simplest,  and  the  one  which  can  be  most 
easily  interpreted  to  the  enlightened  common 

118 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

sense  of  the  modern  man.  Its  most  familiar 
difficulties  are  due  rather  to  the  accidents  of 
controversy  than  to  the  nature  of  the  subject. 

The  fate  which  has  beset  those  who  have 
dealt  with  the  technical  efforts  to  express 
this  idea  is  partly  explicable  by  the  general 
history  of  religion ;  but  is  also  partly  due  to 
varying  personal  factors,  such  as  those  which 
determined  Paul's  own  training.  This  fate 
may  be  summed  up  by  saying  that,  regarding 
just  this  matter  of  the  moral  burden  of  the 
individual,  those  who,  by  virtue  of  their  gen- 
ius or  of  their  experience,  have  most  known 
what  they  meant,  have  least  succeeded  in 
making  clear  to  others  what  they  know. 

Paul,  for  instance,  grasped  the  essential 
meaning  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual 
with  a  perfectly  straightforward  veracity  of 
understanding.  What  he  saw,  as  to  this 
matter,  he  saw  with  tragic  clearness,  and 
upon  the  basis  of  a  type  of  experience  that,  in 
our  own  day,  we  can  verify,  as  we  shall  soon 
see,  much  more  widely  than  was  possible  for 
him.     But   when   he   put   his   doctrine   into 

119 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

words,  both  his  Rabbinical  lore,  and  his 
habits  of  interpreting  tradition,  troubled  his 
speech;  and  the  passages  which  embody  his 
theory  of  the  sinfulness  of  man  remain  as 
diflBcult  and  as  remote  from  his  facts,  as  his 
report  of  these  facts  of  life  themselves  is  elo- 
quent and  true. 

Similar  has  been  the  fortune  of  nearly  all 
subsequent  theology  regarding  the  technical 
treatment  of  this  topic.  Yet  growing  human 
experience,  through  all  the  Christian  ages, 
has  kept  the  topic  near  to  life ;  and  to-day  it 
is  in  closer  touch  with  life  than  ever.  The 
idea  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual 
seems,  to  many  cheerful  minds,  austere; 
but,  if  it  is  grave  and  stern,  it  is  grave  with 
the  gravity  of  life,  and  stern  only  as  the  call 
of  life,  to  any  awakened  mind,  ought  to  be 
stern.  If  the  traditional  technicalities  have 
obscured  it,  they  have  not  been  able  to 
affect  its  deeper  meaning  or  its  practical  sig- 
nificance. Rightly  interpreted,  it  forms,  I 
think,  not  only  an  essential  feature  of  Chris- 
tianity, but  an  indispensable  part  of  every 

120 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

religious  and  moral  view  of  life  which  con- 
siders man's  business  justly,  and  does  so  with 
a  reasonable  regard  for  the  larger  connections 
of  our  obligations  and  of  our  powers. 

IV 

If  we  ourselves  are  to  see  these  larger  con- 
nections, we  must,  for  the  time,  disregard  the 
theological  complications  of  the  history  of 
doctrine  concerning  original  sin,  and  must  also 
disregard  the  metaphysical  problems  that 
lie  behind  these  complications.  We  must  do 
this;  but  not  as  if  these  theological  theories 
were  wholly  arbitrary,  or  wholly  insignificant. 
We  must  simply  begin  with  those  facts  of  hu- 
man nature  which  here  most  deeply  concern 
us. 

These  facts  have  a  metaphysical  basis. 
In  the  end,  we  ourselves  shall  seek  to  come 
into  touch  with  so  much  of  theology  as  most 
has  to  do  with  our  problem  of  Christianity. 
We  cannot  tell,  until  our  preliminary  survey 
is  completed,  and  our  metaphyscial  treatment 
of  our  problem   is   reached,  what  form    our 

121 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

sketch  of  a  theologj^  will  assume.  We  must 
be  patient  with  our  fragmentary  views  until 
we  see  how  to  bring  them  together. 

But,  for  the  time  being,  our  question  re- 
lates not  to  the  legend  of  Adam's  fall,  nor  to 
something  technically  called  original  sin,  but 
to  man  as  we  empirically  know  him.  We 
ask:  How  far  is  the  typical  individual  man 
weighed  down,  in  his  efforts  to  win  the  goal 
of  life,  by  a  bui^den  such  as  Paul  describes  in 
his  epistle  to  the  Romans  ?  And  what  is 
the  significance  of  this  burden  ? 

Here,  at  once,  we  meet  with  the  obvious 
fact,  often  mentioned,  not  only  in  ancient, 
but  also  in  many  modern,  discussions  of  our 
topic,  —  with  the  fact  that  there  are,  deep- 
seated  in  human  nature,  many  tendencies 
that  our  mature  moral  consciousness  views 
as  evil.  These  tendencies  have  a  basis  in 
qualities  that  are  transmitted  by  heredity. 

Viewed  as  an  observant  naturalist,  —  as 
a  disinterested  student  of  the  life-process 
views  them,  all  our  inherited  instincts  are, 
in  one  sense,  upon  a  level.     For  no  instincts 

122 


kliiiliGiiM^giiiiiiiiHIiMiM 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

are,  at  the  outset  of  life,  determined  by  any 
purpose,  —  either  good  or  evil,  —  of  which 
we  are  then  conscious.  But,  when  trained, 
through  experience  and  action,  our  instincts 
become  interwoven  into  complex  habits,  and 
thus  are  transformed  into  our  voluntary 
activities.  What  at  the  beginning  is  an 
elemental  predisposition  to  respond  to  a 
specific  sensory  stimulus  in  a  more  or  less 
vigorous  but  incoherent  and  generalized  way, 
becomes,  in  the  context  of  the  countless 
other  predispositions  upon  which  is  based  our 
later  training,  the  source  of  a  mode  of  conduct, 
—  of  conduct  that,  as  we  grow,  tends  to  be- 
come more  and  more  definite,  and  that  may 
be  valuable  for  good  or  for  ill.  And,  as  a 
fact,  many  of  our  instinctive  predispositions 
actually  appear,  in  the  sequel,  to  be  like 
noxious  plants  or  animals.  That  is,  to  use 
a  familiar  phrase,  they  "turn  out  ill."  They 
are  expressed  in  our  maturer  life  in  malad- 
justments, in  vices,  or  perhaps  in  crimes. 

Now  Paul,  like  a  good  many  other  moralists, 
was  impressed  by  the  number  and  by  the  vigor 

123 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  those  amongst  our  instinctive  predisposi- 
tions which,  under  the  actual  conditions  of 
human  training,  "turn  out  ill,"  and  are  inter- 
woven into  habits  that  often  lead  the  natural 
man  into  baseness  and  into  a  maze  of  evil 
deeds.  Paul  summarizes  this  aspect  of  the 
facts,  as  he  saw  them,  in  his  familiar  picture, 
first,  of  the  Gentile  world,  and  then  of  the 
moral  state  of  the  unregenerate  who  were 
Jews.  This  picture  we  find  in  the  opening 
chapters  of  his  epistle  to  the  Romans. 

The  majority  of  readers  appear  to  suppose 
that  the  essential  basis  of  Paul's  theory  about 
the  moral  burden  of  the  individual  is  to  be 
found  in  these  opening  chapters,  and  in  the 
assertion  that  the  worst  vices  and  crimes  of 
mankind  are  the  most  accurate  indications  of 
how  bad  human  nature  is.  For  such  readers, 
whether  they  agree  with  Paul  or  not,  the 
whole  problem  reduces  to  the  question:  "Are 
men,  and  are  human  traits  and  tendencies, 
naturally  as  mischievous ;  are  we  all  as  much 
predisposed  to  vices  and  to  crimes  as  Paul's 
dark  picture  of  the  world  in  which  he  lived  bids 

124 


L  '.S:;'!: 


MORALBURDENOFTHEIN  DIVIDUAL 

US  believe  that  all  human  characters  are  ?  Is 
man,  —  viewed  as  a  fair  observer  from  another 
planet  might  view  him,  —  is  man  by  nature, 
or  by  heredity,  predominantly  like  a  noxious 
plant  or  animal  ?  Unless  some  external 
power,  such  as  the  power  that  Paul  conceives 
to  be  Divine  Grace,  miraculously  saves  him, 
is  he  bound  to  turn  out  ill,  —  to  be  the  beast 
of  prey,  the  victim  of  lust,  the  venomous 
creature,  whom  Paul  portrays  in  these  earlier 
chapters  of  his  letters  to  the  Romans?" 

You  well  know  that,  as  to  the  questions 
thus  raised,  there  is  much  to  be  said,  both  for 
and  against  the  predominantly  mischievous 
character  of  the  natural  and  instinctive  pre- 
dispositions of  men  ;  and  both  for  and  against 
the  usual  results  of  training,  in  case  of  the 
people  who  make  up  our  social  world.  Paul's 
account  of  this  aspect  of  the  life  of  the 
natural  man  has  both  its  apologists  and  its 
critics. 

I  must  simply  decline,  however,  to  follow 
the  usual  controversies  as  to  the  natural  pre- 
dispositions of  the  human  animal  any  further 

125 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  this  place.  I  have  mentioned  the  familiar 
topic  in  order  to  say  at  once  that  none  of  the 
considerations  which  the  opening  chapters 
of  the  epistle  to  the  Romans  suggest  to  a 
modern  reader  regarding  the  noxious  or  the 
useful  instinctive  predispositions  of  ordinary 
men,  or  even  of  extraordinarily  defective  or 
of  exceptionally  gifted  human  beings,  seem 
to  be  of  any  great  importance  for  the  under- 
standing of  the  genuine  Pauline  doctrine  of 
the  moral  burden  of  the  individual. 

Paul  opened  the  epistle  to  the  Romans  by 
considerations  which  merely  prepared  the 
way  for  his  main  thesis.  His  argument  in 
the  earlier  chapters  is  also  chiefly  preparatory. 
But  his  main  doctrine  concerning  our  moral 
burden  depends  upon  other  considerations 
than  a  mere  enumeration  of  the  vices  and 
crimes  of  a  corrupt  society.  It  depends, 
in  fact,  upon  considerations  which,  as  I 
believe,  are  almost  wholly  overlooked  in 
most  of  the  technical  controversies  concerning 
original  sin,  and  concerning  the  evil  case  of 
the  unregenerate  man. 

126 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

I  shall  venture  to  translate  these  more  sig- 
nificant considerations  which  Paul  empha- 
sizes into  a  relatively  modern  phraseology. 
I  believe  that  I  shall  do  so  in  a  way  that  is 
just  to  Paul's  spirit,  and  that  will  enable  us 
soon  to  return  to  the  text  of  the  seventh  chap- 
ter of  his  epistle  with  a  clearer  understanding 
of  the  main  issue. 


Whoever  sets  out  to  study,  as  psychologist, 
the  moral  side  of  human  nature,  with  the 
intention  of  founding  upon  that  study  an 
estimate  of  the  part  which  good  and  evil  play 
in  our  life,  must  make  clear  to  his  mind  a 
familiar,  but  important,  and  sometimes  neg- 
lected distinction.  This  is  the  distinction 
between  the  conduct  of  men,  upon  the  one 
hand,  and  the  grade  or  sort  of  consciousness 
with  which,  upon  the  other  hand,  their  con- 
duct, whatever  it  is,  is  accompanied. 

Conduct,  as  we  have  already  mentioned, 
results  from  the  training  which  our  heredi- 
tary predispositions,  our  instinctive  tenden- 

127 


THE    PROBLEM    OF   CHRISTIANITY 

cies,  get,  when  the  environment  has  played 
upon  them  in  a  suitable  way,  and  for  a  suffi- 
cient time.  The  environment  which  trains 
us  to  our  conduct  may  be  animate  or  inani- 
mate ;  although  in  our  case  it  is  very  largely 
a  human  environment.  It  is  not  necessary 
that  we  should  be  clearly  aware  of  what  our 
conduct  in  a  given  instance  is  or  means, 
just  as  it  is  not  necessary  that  one  who  speaks 
a  language  fluently  should  be  consciously 
acquainted  with  the  grammar  of  that  language, 
or  that  one  who  can  actually  find  the  way 
over  a  path  in  the  mountains  should  be  able 
to  give  directions  to  a  stranger  such  as  would 
enable  the  latter  to  find  the  same  way. 

In  general,  it  requires  one  sort  of  training  to 
establish  in  us  a  given  form  of  conduct,  and 
a  decidedly  different  sort  of  training  to  make 
us  aware  of  what  that  form  of  conduct  is, 
and  of  what,  for  us  ourselves,  it  means. 

The  training  of  all  the  countless  higher 
and  more  complex  grades  and  types  of  knowl- 
edge about  our  own  conduct  which  we  can 
find  present  in  the  world  of  our  self-knowledge, 

128 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

is  subject  to  a  general  principle  which  I  may 
as  well  state  at  once.  Conduct,  as  I  have 
just  said,  can  be  trained  through  the  action 
of  any  sort  of  tolerable  environment,  animate 
or  inanimate.  But  the  higher  and  more  com-' 
plex  types  of  our  consciousness  about  our 
conduct,  our  knowledge  about  what  we  do, 
and  about  why  we  do  it,  —  all  this  more 
complex  sort  of  practical  knowledge  of  our- 
selves, is  trained  by  a  specific  sort  of  environ- 
ment, namely,  by  a  social  environment. 

And  the  social  environment  that  most 
awakens  our  self-consciousness  about  our 
conduct  does  so  by  opposing  us,  by  criticising 
us,  or  by  otherwise  standing  in  contrast  with 
us.  Our  knowledge  of  our  conduct,  in  all 
its  higher  grades,  and  our  knowledge  of  our- 
selves  as  the  authors  or  as  the  guides  of  our 
own  conduct,  our  knowledge  of  how  and  why 
we  do  what  we  do,  —  all  such  more  elaborate 
self-knowledge  is,  directly  or  indirectly,  a 
social  product,  and  a  product  of  social  con- 
trasts  and  oppositions  of  one  sort  or  another. 
Our  fellows  train  us  to  all  our  higher  grades 

K  129 


4l 


am:i-Ji-Y  «.» J^'J«tA.■,^f'^ 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  practical  self-knowledge,  and  they  do  so  by 
giving  us  certain  sorts  of  social  trouble. 

If  we  were  capable  of  training  our  conduct 
in  solitude,  we  should  not  be  nearly  as  con- 
scious as  we  now  are  of  the  plans,  of  the 
ideals,  of  the  meaning,  of  this  conduct.  A 
solitary  animal,  if  well  endowed  with  suitable 
instincts,  and  if  trained  through  the  sort  of 
experimenting  that  any  intelligent  animal 
carries  out  as  he  tries  to  satisfy  his  wants, 
would  gradually  form  some  sort  of  conduct. 
This  conduct  might  be  highly  skilful.  But 
if  this  animal  lived  in  a  totally  unsocial,  in  a 
wholly  inanimate,  environment,  he  would 
meet  with  no  facts  that  could  teach  him  to  be 
aware  of  what  his  conduct  was,  in  the  sense 
and  degree  in  which  we  are  aware  of  our  own 
conduct.  For  he,  as  a  solitary  creature,  would 
find  no  other  instance  of  conduct  with  which  to 
compare  his  own.  And  all  knowledge  rests 
upon  comparison.  It  is  my  knowledge  of 
my  fellows'  doings,  and  of  their  behavior 
toward  me,  —  it  is  this  which  gives  me  the 
basis  for  the  sort  of  comparison  that  I  use 

130 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

• 

whenever    I    succeed    in    more    thoughtfully 
observing   myself   or   estimating   myself. 

If  you  want  to  grasp  this  principle,  consider 
any  instance  that  you  please  wherein  you  are 
actually  and  clearly  aware  of  how  you  behave 
and  of  why  you  behave  thus.  Consider, 
namely,  any  instance  of  a  higher  sort  of  skill 
in  an  art,  in  a  game,  in  business,  —  an  in- 
stance, namely,  wherein  you  not  only  are 
skilful,  but  are  fully  observant  of  what  your 
skill  is,  and  of  why  you  consciously  prefer 
this  way  of  playing  or  of  working.  You 
will  find  that  always  your  knowledge  and  your 
estimate  of  your  skill  and  of  your  own  way 
of  doing,  turn  upon  comparing  your  own  con- 
duct with  that  of  some  real  or  ideal  comrade, 
or  fellow,  or  rival,  or  opponent,  or  critic; 
or  upon  knowing  how  your  social  order  in 
general  carries  on  or  estimates  this  sort  of 
conduct;  or,  finally,  upon  remembering  or 
using  the  results  of  former  social  comparisons 
of  the  types  mentioned. 

I  walk  as  I  happen  to  walk,  and  in  general, 
if  let  alone,  I  have  no  consciousness  as  to 

131 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 


what  my  manner  of  walking  is;  but  let  my 
fellow's  gait  or  pace  attract  my  attention, 
or  let  my  fellow  laugh  at  my  gait,  or  let  him 
otherwise  show  that  he  observes  my  gait; 
and  forthwith,  if  my  interest  is  stirred,  I 
may  have  the  ground  for  beginning  to  observe 
what  my  own  gait  is,  and  how  it  is  to  be  esti- 
mated. 

In  brief,  it  is  our  fellows  who  first  startle 
us  out  of  our  natural  unconsciousness  about 
our  own  conduct ;  and  who  then,  by  an  end- 
less series  of  processes  of  setting  us  attractive 
but  difficult  models,  and  of  socially  interfer- 
ing with  our  own  doings,  train  us  to  higher 
and  higher  grades  and  to  more  and  more 
complex  types  of  self -consciousness  regarding 
what  we  do  and  why  we  do  it.  Play  and 
conflict,  rivalry  and  emulation,  conscious 
imitation  and  conscious  social  contrasts  be- 
tween man  and  man,  —  these  are  the  source 
of  each  man's  consciousness  about  his  own 
conduct. 

Whatever  occurs  in  our  literal  social  life, 
and  in  company  with  our  real  fellows,  can  be, 

132 


i 

s3 


% 

i 


- 


and  often  is,  repeated  with  endless  variations 
in  our  memory  and  imagination,  and  in  a 
companionship  with  ideal  fellow-beings  of 
all  grades  of  significance.  And  thus  our 
thoughts  and  memories  of  all  human  beings 
who  have  aroused  our  interest,  as  well  as  our 
thoughts  about  God,  enrich  our  social  environ- 
ment by  means  of  a  wealth  of  real  and  ideal 
fellow-beings,  with  whom  we  can  and  do 
compare  and  contrast  ourselves  and  our  own 
conduct. 

And  since  all  this  is  true,  this  whole  process  ' 
of  our  knowledge  about  our  own  doings,  and 
about  our  plans,  and  about  our  estimates  of 
ourselves,  is  a  process  capable  of  simply 
endless  variation,  growth,  and  idealization. 
Hence  the  variations  of  our  moral  self-con- 
sciousness have  all  the  wealth  of  the  entire 
spiritual  world.  Comparing  our  doings  with 
the  standards  that  the  social  will  furnishes  to 
us,  in  the  form  of  customs  and  of  rules,  we 
become  aware  both  of  what  Paul  calls,  in  a 
special  instance,  "the  law,"  and  of  ourselves 
either  as  in  harmony  with  or  opposed  to  this 

133 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

law.  The  comparison  and  the  contrast  make 
us  view  ourselves  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
social  will,  —  that  is,  "the  law,"  —  on  the 
other  side,  as  so  related  that,  the  more  we 
know  of  the  social  will,  the  more  highly  con- 
scious of  ourselves  we  become;  while  the 
better  we  know  ourselves,  the  more  clearly  we 
estimate  the  dignity  and  the  authority  of  the 
social  will. 

So  much,  then,  for  a  mere  hint  of  the  general 
ways  in  which  our  moral  self-consciousness 
is  a  product  of  our  social  life.  This  self  is 
known  to  each  one  of  us  through  its  social 
contrasts  with  other  selves,  and  with  the  will 
of  the  community.  If  these  contrasts  dis- 
please us,  we  try  to  relieve  the  tension.  If 
they  fascinate,  we  form  our  ideals  accord- 
ingly. But  in  either  case  we  become  conscious 
of  some  plan  or  ideal  of  our  own.  Our  devel- 
oped conscience,  psychologically  speaking,  is 
the  product  of  endless  efforts  to  clear  up,  to 
simplify,  to  reduce  to  some  sort  of  unity  and 
harmony,  the  equally  endless  contrasts  be- 
tween the  self,  the  fellow-man,  and  the  social 

134 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

will  in  general,  —  contrasts  which  our  social 
experience  constantly  reveals  and  renders 
fascinating  or  agonizing,  according  to  the 
state  of  our  sensitiveness  or  of  our  fortunes. 

VI 

These  hints  of  the  nature  of  a  process  which 
you  can  illustrate  by  every  higher  form  and 
gradation  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  men 
have  now  prepared  us  for  one  more  obser- 
vation which,  when  properly  understood, 
will  bring  us  directly  in  contact  with  Paul's 
own  comments  upon  the  moral  burden  of  any 
human  being  who  reaches  a  high  spiritual  level. 

Our  conduct  may  be,  according  to  our 
instincts  and  our  training,  whatever  it  hap- 
pens to  be.  Since  man  is  an  animal  that  is 
hard  to  train,  it  will  often  be,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  social  will  of  our  community, 
more  or  less  defective  conduct.  But  it  might 
also  be  fairly  good  conduct;  and,  in  normal 
people  of  good  training,  it  often  is  so.  In 
this  respect,  then,  it  seems  unpsychological 
to   assert    that    the    conduct    of   all    natural 

135 


\ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

men   is   universally   depraved,  —  however   ill 
Paul  thought  of  his  Gentiles. 

Let  us  turn,  however,  from  men's  conduct 
to  their  consciousness  about  their  conduct; 
and  then  the  simple  and  general  principles 
just  enunciated  will  give  us  a  much  graver 
view  of  our  moral  situation.  Paul's  main 
thesis  about  our  moral  burden  relates  not  to 
our  conduct,  but  to  our  consciousness  about 

our  conduct. 

Our  main  result,  so  far,  is  that,  from  a 
purely  psychological  point  of  view,  my  con- 
sciousness about  my  conduct,  and  conse- 
quently my  power  to  form  ideals,  and  my 
power  to  develop  any  sort  of  conscience,  are 
a  product  of  my  nature  as  a  social  being. 
And  the  product  arises  in  this  way:  Con- 
trasts, rivalries,  difficult  efforts  to  imitate 
some  fascinating  fellow-being,  contests  with 
my  foes,  emulation,  social  ambition,  the 
desire  to  attract  attention,  the  desire  to  find 
my  place  in  my  social  order,  my  interest  in 
what  my  fellows  say  and  do,  and  especially 
in  what  they  say  and  do  with  reference  to 

136 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

me, —  such  are  the  more  elemental  social 
motives  and  the  social  situations  which  at 
first  make  me  highly  conscious  of  my  own 
doings. 

Upon  the  chaos  of  these  social  contrasts 
my  whole  later  training  in  the  knowledge  of 
the  good  and  the  evil  of  my  own  conduct  is 
founded.  My  conscience  grows  out  of  this 
chaos,  —  grows  as  my  reason  grows,  through 
the  effort  to  get  harmony  into  this  chaos. 
However  reasonable  I  become,  however  high 
the  grade  of  the  conscientious  ideals  to  which, 
through  the  struggle  to  win  harmony,  I 
finally  attain,  all  of  my  own  conscientious  life 
is  psychologically  built  upon  the  lowly  foun- 
dations thus  furnished  by  the  troubled  social 
life,  that,  together  with  my  fellows,  I  must 
lead. 


VII 

But  now  it  needs  no  great  pessimism  to 
observe  that  our  ordinary  social  life  is  one 
in  which  there  is  a  great  deal  of  inevitable 
tension,  or  natural    disharmony.     Such   ten- 

137 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

sion,  and  such  disharmony,  are  due  not 
necessarily  to  the  graver  vices  of  men.  The 
gravest  disharmonies  often  result  merely  from 
the  mutual  misunderstandings  of  men.  There 
are  so  many  of  us.  We  naturally  differ  so 
much  from  one  another.  We  comprehend 
each  other  so  ill,  or,  at  best,  with  such  diffi- 
culty. Hence  social  tension  is,  so  to  speak, 
the  primary  state  of  any  new  social  enter- 
prise, and  can  be  relieved  only  through 
special   and  constantly   renewed  efforts. 

But  this  simple  observation  leads  to  an- 
other. If  our  social  life,  owing  to  the  num- 
ber, the  variety,  and  the  ignorance  of  the 
individuals  who  make  up  our  social  world, 
is  prevailingly  or  primarily  one  in  which 
strained  social  situations,  —  forms  of  social 
tension,  —  social  troubles,  are  present,  and 
are  constantly  renewed,  it  follows  that  every 
individual  who  is  to  reach  a  high  grade  of 
self-consciousness  as  to  his  own  doings,  will 
be  awakened  to  his  observation  of  himself  by 
one  or  another  form  or  instance  of  social 
tension.     As  a  fact,  it  is  rivalry,  or  contest,  or 

138 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

criticism  that  first,  as  we  have  seen,  naturally 
brings  to  my  notice  what  I  am  doing.  And 
the  obvious  rule  is  that,  within  reasonable 
limits,  the  greater  the  social  tension  of  the 
situation  in  which  I  am  placed,  the  sharper 
and  clearer  does  my  social  contrast  with  my 
fellows  become  to  me.  And  thus,  the  greater 
the  social  tension  is,  the  more  do  I  become 
aw^re,  through  such  situations,  both  about 
my  own  conduct,  and  about  my  plans  and 
ideals,  and  about  my  will. 

In  brief,  my  moral  self-consciousness  is 
bred  in  me  through  social  situations  that  in- 
volve, —  not  necessarily  any  physical  con- 
flict with  my  fellows,  —  but,  in  general,  some 
form  of  social  conflict,  —  conflict  such  as 
engenders  mutual  criticism.  Man  need  not 
be,  when  civilized,  at  war  with  his  fellows  in 
the  sense  of  using  the  sword  against  them. 
But  he  comes  to  self-consciousness  as  a  moral 
being  through  the  spiritual  warfare  of  mutual 
observation,  of  mutual  criticism,  of  rivalry, 

yes,  too  often  through  the  warfare  of  envy 
and  of  gossip  and  of  scandal-mongering,  and 

139 


iiMMMwgaaaiw 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  whatever  else  belongs  to  the  early  training 
that  many  people  give  to  their  own  consciences, 
through  taking  a  more  or  less  hostile  account 
of  the  consciences  of  their  neighbors.  Such 
things  result  from  the  very  conditions  of 
high  grades  of  self-consciousness  about  our 
conduct  and  our  ideals. 

The  moral  self,  then,  the  natural  con- 
science, is  bred  through  situations  that  in- 
volve social  tension.     What  follows  ? 

VIII 

It  follows  that  such  tension,  in  each  special 
case,  indeed  seems  evil  to  us,  and  calls  for 
relief.  And  in  seeking  for  such  relief,  the 
social  will,  in  its  corporate  capacity,  the  will 
of  the  community,  forms  its  codes,  its  custom- 
ary laws ;  and  attempts  to  teach  each  of  us 
how  he  ought  to  deal  with  his  neighbors  so 
as  to  promote  the  general  social  harmony. 
But  these  codes,  —  these  forms  of  customary 
morality,  —  they  have  to  be  taught  to  us  as 
conscious  rules  of  conduct.  They  can  only 
be  taught  to  us  by  first  teaching  us  to  be  more 

140 


MORALBURDENOFTHEIN  DIVIDUAL 

considerate,  more  self -observant,  more  for- 
mally conscientious  than  we  were  before. 
But  to  accomplish  this  aim  is  to  bring  us  to 
some  higher  level  of  our  general  self-conscious- 
ness concerning  our  own  doings.  And  this 
can  be  done,  as  a  rule,  only  by  applying  to 
us  some  new  form  of  social  discipline  which, 
in  general,  introduces  still  new  and  more 
complex  kinds  of  tension,  —  new  social  con- 
trasts between  the  general  will  and  our 
own  will,  new  conflicts  between  the  self 
and  its  world. 

Our  social  training  thus  teaches  us  to  know 
ourselves  through  a  process  which  arouses 
our  self-will ;  and  this  tendency  grows  with 
what  it  feeds  upon.  The  higher  the  training 
and  the  more  cultivated  and  elaborate  is  our 
socially  trained  conscience,  —  the  more  highly 
conscious  our  estimate  of  our  own  value 
becomes,  and  so,  in  general,  the  stronger 
grows  our  self-will. 

This  is  a  commonplace ;  but  it  is  precisely 
upon  this  very  commonplace  that  the  moral 
burden    of    the    typical    individual,    trained 

141 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

under  natural  social  conditions,  rests.  If  the 
individual  is  no  defective  or  degenerate,  but 
a  fairly  good  member  of  his  stock,  his  conduct 
may  be  trained  by  effective  social  discipline 
into  a  more  or  less  admirable  conformity  to 
the  standards  of  the  general  will.  But  his 
conduct  is  not  the  same  as  his  own  conscious- 
ness about  his  conduct;  or,  in  other  words, 
his  deeds  and  his  ideals  are  not  necessarily 
in  mutual  agreement.  Meanwhile,  his  con- 
sciousness about  his  conduct,  his  ideals,  his 
conscience,  are  all  trained,  under  ordinary 
conditions,  by  a  social  process  that  begins  in 
social  troubles,  in  tensions,  in  rivalries,  in 
contests,  and  that  naturally  continues,  the 
farther  it  goes,  to  become  more  and  more  a 
process  which  introduces  new  and  more  com- 
plex conflicts. 

This  evil  constantly  increases.  The  bur- 
den grows  heavier.  Society  can,  by  its  ordi- 
nary skill,  train  many  to  be  its  servants, 
—  servants  who,  being  under  rigid  discipline, 
submit  because  they  must.  But  precisely 
in  proportion  as  society  becomes  more  skilled 

142 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

in  the  external  forms  of  culture,  it  trains  its 
servants  by  a  process  that  breeds  spiritual 
enemies.  That  is,  it  breeds  men  who,  even 
when  they  keep  the  peace,  are  inwardly 
enemies  one  of  another;  because  every  man, 
in  a  highly  cultivated  social  world,  is  trained 
to  moral  self-consciousness  by  his  social 
conflicts.  And  these  same  men  are  inwardly 
enemies  of  the  collective  social  will  itself, 
because  in  a  highly  cultivated  social  order 
the  social  will  is  oppressively  vast,  and  the 
individual  is  trained  to  self-consciousness  by 
a  process  which  shows  him  the  contrast 
between  his  own  will  and  this,  which  so  far 
seems  to  him  a  vast  impersonal  social  will. 
He  may  obey.  That  is  conduct.  But  he. 
will  naturally  revolt  inwardly;  and  that  is 
his  inevitable  form  of  spiritual  self-assertion, 
so  long  as  he  is  trained  to  self-consciousness 
in  this  way,  and  is  still  without  the  spiritual 
transformations  that  some  higher  form  of 
love  for  the  community,  —  some  form  of 
loyalty,  and  that  alone,  —  can  bring. 
This  revolt  will  tend  to  increase  as  culture 

143 


i 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

advances.      High    social    cultivation    breeds 
spiritual  enmities.     For  it  trains  what  we  in 
our  day  call  individualism,  and,  upon  pre- 
cisely  its   most   cultivated   levels,   glories  in 
creating   highly   conscious   individuals.     But 
these  individuals   are   brought  to  conscious- 
ness by  their  social  contrasts  and  conflicts. 
Their   very   consciences   are   tainted   by   the 
original   sin   of   social   contentiousness.     The 
Hgher  the  cultivation,  the  vaster  and  deeper 
are  precisely  the  more  spiritual  and  the  more 
significant  of  these  inward  and  outward  con- 
flicts.    Cultivation  breeds  civilized  conduct; 
it    also    breeds    conscious    independence    of 
spirit  and  deep  inner  opposition  to  all  mere 
external  authority. 

Before  this  sort  of  moral  evil  the  moral 
indi^ndual,  thus  cultivated,  is,  if  viewed 
merely  as  a  creature  of  cultivation,  power- 
less. His  very  conscience  is  the  product  of 
spiritual  warfare,  and  its  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil  is  tainted  by  its  origin.  The  burden 
grows;  and  the  moral  individual  cannot 
bear  it,  unless  his  whole  type  of  self-conscious- 

144 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

ness  is  transformed  by  a  new  spiritual  power 
which  this  type  of  cultivation  can  never  of 
itself  furnish. 

For  the  moral  cultivation  just  described  is 
cultivation  in  ''the  law"  ;  that  is,  in  the  rules 
of  the  social  will.  But  such  cultivation 
breeds  individualism;  that  is,  breeds  con- 
sciousness of  self-will.  And  the  burden  of 
this  self-will  increases  with  cultivation.       

As  we  all  know,  individualism,  viewed  as  a 
highly  potent  social  tendency,  is  a  product  of 
high  cultivation.  It  is  also  a  relatively  mod- 
ern product  of  such  cultivation.  Savages 
appear  to  know  little  about  individualism. 
Where  tribal  custom  is  almighty,  the  indi- 
vidual is  trained  to  conduct,  but  not  to  a 
high  grade  of  self-consciousness.  Hence  the 
individual,  in  a  primitive  community,  sub- 
mits ;  but  also  he  has  no  very  elaborate  con- 
science. Among  most  ancient  peoples,  indi- 
vidualism was  still  nearly  unknown. 

Two  ancient  peoples,  living  under  special 
conditions  and  possessing  an  extraordinary 
genius,  developed  very  high  grades  of  indi- 

L  145 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
vidualism.  One  of  these  peoples  was  Israel, 
-especially  that  fragment  of  later  Israel 
to  which  Judaism  was  due.  Paul  well  knew 
what  was  the  nature  and  the  meaning  of  just 
that  high  development  of  individuality  which 
Judaism  had  in  his  day  made  possible. 

The  other  one  of  these  peoples   was  the 
Greek    people.      Their    individualism,    their 
high  type  of  self-consciousness  regarding  con- 
duct, showed  what  is  meant  by  being,  as  every 
highly     individualistic   type    of    civilization 
since  their  day  has    been,  characteristically 
merciless  to  individuals.     Greek  individual- 
ism devoured    its    own   children.     The   con- 
sciousness of  social  opposition  determined  the 
high  grade  of  self-consciousness  of  the  Greek 
genius.     It    also    determined    the    course    of 
Greek    history    and    politics;     and    so    the 
greatest  example  of  national  genius  which  the 
world  has  ever  seen  promptly  destroyed  its 
,  own  life,  just  because  its  self-consciousness 
'  was   due  to   social   conflicts   and   intensified 
them.     The  original  sin  of  its  own  cultivation 
was  the  doom  of  that  cultivation. 

146 


jjjg^gg^gl^ 


nSa 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

In  the  modern  world  the  habit  of  forming 
a  high  grade  of  individual  consciousness  has 
now  become  settled.  We  have  learned  the 
lesson  that  Israel  and  Greece  taught.  Hence 
we  speak  of  personal  moral  independence  as 
if  it  were  our  characteristic  spiritual  ideal. 
This  ideal  is  now  fostered  still  more  highly 
than  ever  before,  —  is  fostered  by  the  vast- 
ness  of  our  modern  social  forces,  and  by  the 
way  in  which  these  forces  are  to-day  used  to 
train  the  individual  consciousness  which  op- 
poses itself  to  them,  and  which  is  trained  to 
this  sort  of  opposition. 

The  result  is  that  the  training  of  the  culti- 
vated individual,  under  modern  conditions, 
uses,  on  the  one  hand,  all  the  motives  of 
what  Paul  calls  "the  flesh,"  —  all  the  natural 
endowment  of  man  the  social  being,  —  but 
develops  this  fleshly  nature  so  that  it  is 
trained  to  self-consciousness  by  emphasizing 
every  sort  and  grade  of  more  skilful  oppo- 
sition to  the  very  social  will  that  trains  it. 
Our  modern  world  is  therefore  peculiarly 
fitted  to  illustrate  the  thesis  of  Paul's  seventh 

147 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

chapter  of  the  epistle  to  the  Romans.  To 
that  chapter  let  us  now,  for  a  moment, 
return. 

IX 

The  difficulty  of  the  argument  of  Paul's 
seventh  chapter  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  speak- 
ing of  our  sinful  nature,  he  emphasizes  three 
apparently   conflicting  considerations:    First, 
he  asserts  that  sinfulness  belongs  to  our  ele- 
mental nature,  to  our  flesh  as  it  is  at  birth ; 
secondly,  he  insists  that  sin  is  not  cured  but 
increased  by  cultivation,  unless  the  power  of 
the  Divine  Spirit  intervenes  and  transforms 
us  into  new  creatures;    thirdly,  he  declares 
that  our  sinfulness  belongs  not  to  especially 
defective  or  degenerate  sinners,  but  to  the 
race  in  its  corporate  capacity,  so  that  no  one 
is  privileged  to  escape  by  any  good  deed  of 
his   own,   since   we   are   all   naturally   under 

the  curse. 

To  the  first  consideration  many  modem 
men  reply  that  at  birth  we  have  only  untrained 
instinctive  predispositions,  which  may,  under 

148 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

training,  tu^n  out  well  or  ill,  but  which,  until 
training  turns  them  into  conduct,  are  innocent. 

This  comment  is  true,  but  does  not  touch 
Paul's  main  thesis,  which  is  that,  being  as  to 
the  flesh  what  we  are,  —  that  is,  being  essen- 
tially social  animals,  —  all  our  natural  moral 
cultivation,  if  successful,  can  only  make  us  I 
aware  of  our  sinfulness.  "Howbeit,  I  had 
not  known  sin  but  for  the  law."  It  is  pre- 
cisely this  thesis  which  the  natural  history  of 
the  training  of  our  ordinary  moral  self-con- 
sciousness illustrates.  This  training  usually 
takes  place  through  impressing  the  social  will 
upon  the  individual  by  means  of  discipline. 
The  result  must  be  judged  not  by  the  acci- 
dental fortunes  of  this  or  of  that  formally 
virtuous  or  obviously  vicious  individual.  The 
true  problem  lies  deeper  than  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  look.  It  is  just  that  problem  which 
Paul  understands. 

Train  me  to  morality  by  the  ordinary  modes 
of  discipline  and  you  do  two  things :  First, 
and  especially  under  modern  conditions,  you 
teach  me  so-called  independence,  self-reliance. 

149 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

You  teach  me  to  know  and  to  prize  from  the 
depths  of  my  soul,  my  own  individual  will. 
The  higher  the  civilization  in  which  this  mode 
of  training  is  followed,  the  more  I  become 
an  individualist  among  mutually  hostile  indi- 
vidualists, a  citizen  of  a  world  where  all  are 
consciously  free  to  think  ill  of  one  another,  and 
to  say,  to  every  external  authority  :  "  My  will, 
not  thine,  be  done." 

But  this  teaching  of  independence  is  also 
a  teaching  of  distraction  and  inner  despair. 
For,  if  I  indeed  am  intelligent,  I  also  learn 
that,  in  a  highly  cultivated  civilization,  the 
social  will  is  mighty,  and  daily  grows  mightier, 
and  must,  ordinarily  and  outwardly,  prevail 
unless  chaos  is  to  come.  Hence  you  indeed 
may  discipline  me  into  obedience,  but  it  is  a 
distracted  and  wilful  obedience,  which  con- 
stantly wars  with  the  very  dignity  of  spirit 
which  my  training  teaches  me  to  revere.  On 
the  one  hand,  as  reasonable  being,  I  say: 
"I  ought  to  submit;  for  law  is  mighty; 
and  I  would  not,  if  I  could,  bring  anarchy." 
So  much  I  say,  if  I  am  indeed  successfully 

150 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

trained.  But  I  will  not  obey  with  the  inner 
man.  For  I  am  the  being  of  inalienable 
individual  rights,  of  unconquerable  indepen- 
dence. I  have  my  own  law  in  my  own  mem- 
bers, which,  however  I  seem  to  obey,  is  at 
war  with  the  social  will.  I  am  the  divided 
self.  The  more  I  struggle  to  escape  through 
my  moral  cultivation,  the  more  I  discern  my 
divided  state.  Oh,  wretched  man  that  I 
am  ! 

Now  this  my  divided  state,  this  my  dis- 
traction of  will,  is  no  mishap  of  my  private 
fortune.  It  belongs  to  the  human  race,  as  a 
race  capable  of  high  moral  cultivation.  It 
is  the  misfortune,  the  doom  of  man  the  social 
animal,  if  you  train  him  through  the  disci- 
pline of  social  tension,  through  troubles  with 
his  neighbors,  through  opposition  and  through 
social  conflict,  through  what  Whistler  called 
"the  gentle  art  of  making  enemies."  This, 
apart  from  all  legends,  is  Paul's  thesis;  and 
it  is  true  to  human  nature.  The  more  outer"^ 
law  there  is  in  our  cultivation,  the  more  inner 
rebellion  there  is  in  the  very  individuals  whom 

151 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 


our  cultivation  creates.  And  this  moral  bur- 
den of  the  individual  is  also  the  burden  of  the 
race,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  race  that  is 
(^ocial  in  a  human  sense. 

Possibly  all  this  may  still  seem  to  you  the 
mere  construction  of  a  theorist.  And  yet  an 
age  that,  like  our  own,  faces  in  new  forms 
the  conflicts  between  what  we  often  name 
individualism  and  collectivism,  —  a  time  such 
as  the  present  one,  when  every  new  enlarge- 
ment of  our  vast  corporations  is  followed  by 
a  new  development  of  strikes  and  of  industrial 
conflicts,  —  a  time,  I  say,  such  as  ours  ought 
to  know  where  the  original  sin  of  our  social 
nature  lies. 

For  our  time  shows  us  that  individualism 
and  collectivism  are  tendencies,  each  of  which, 
as  our  social  order  grows,  intensifies  the  other. 
The  more  the  social  will  expresses  itself  in 
vast  organizations  of  collective  power,  the 
more  are  individuals  trained  to  be  aware  of 
their  own  personal  wants  and  choices  and 
ideals,  and  of  the  vast  opportunities  that  would 
be  theirs  if  they  could  but  gain  control  of 

152 


these  social  forces.  The  more,  in  sum,  does 
their  individual  self-will  become  conscious, 
deliberate,  cultivated,  and  therefore  danger- 
ously alert  and  ingenious. 

Yet,  if  the  individuals  in  question  are 
highly  intelligent,  and  normally  orderly  in 
their  social  habits,  their  self-will,  thus  for- 
cibly kept  awake  and  watchful  through  the 
very  powers  which  the  collective  will  has 
devised,  is  no  longer,  in  our  own  times,  a 
merely  stupid  attempt  to  destroy  all  social 
authority.  It  need  not  be  childishly  vicious 
or  grossly  depraved,  like  Paul's  Gentiles  in 
his  earlier  chapters  of  the  epistle  to  the 
Romans.  It  is  a  sensitive  self-will,  which 
feels  the  importance  of  the  social  forces,  and 
which  wants  them  to  grow  more  powerful, 
so  that  haply  they  may  be  used  by  the  indi- 
vidual himself. 

And  so,  when  opportunity  offers,  the  indi-  ^ 
vidual  self-will  casts  its  vote  in  favor  of  new 
devices  to  enrich  or  to  intensify  the  expres- 
sion  of   the   collective   will.     For   it   desires 
social  powers.     It  wants   them  for   its  own 

153 


( 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

use.  Hence,  in  its  rebellion  against  authority, 
when  such  rebellion  arises,  it  is  a  consciously 
divided  self-will,  which  takes  in  our  day  no 
form  more  frequently  than  the  general  form  of 
moral  unrest,  of  discontent  with  its  own  most 
ardent  desires.  It  needs  only  a  little  more 
emphasis  upon  moral  or  religious  problems 
than,  in  worldly  people,  in  our  day,  it  displays, 
in  order  to  be  driven  to  utter  from  a  full 
heart  Paul's  word:  "O  wretched  man  that 
I  am!" 

For  the  highly  trained  modern  agitator,  or 
the  plastic  disciple  of  agitators,  if  both  intel- 
ligent and  reasonably  orderly  in  habits,  is 
intensely  both  an  individualist  and  a  man  who 
needs  the  collective  will,  who  in  countless 
ways  and  cases  bows  to  that  will,  and  votes 
for  it,  and  increases  its  power.  The  indi- 
vidualism of  such  a  man  wars  with  his  own 
collectivism ;  while  each,  as  I  insist,  tends  to 
inflame  the  other.  As  an  agitator,  the  typi- 
cally restless  child  of  our  age  often  insists 
upon  heaping  up  new  burdens  of  social 
control,  —  control  that  he  indeed  intends  to 

154 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

have  others  feel  rather  than  himself.  As 
individualist,  longing  to  escape,  perhaps  from 
his  economic  cares,  perhaps  from  the  mar- 
riage bond,  such  a  highly  intelligent  agitator 
may  speak  rebelliously  of  all  restrictions, 
declare  Nietzsche  to  be  his  prophet,  and  set  "^ 
out  to  be  a  Superman  as  if  he  were  no  social 
animal  at  all.  Wretched  man,  by  reason 
of  his  divided  will,  he  is ;  and  he  needs  only 
a  little  reflection  to  observe  the  fact. 

But  note:  These  are  no  mere  accidents 
of  our  modern  world.  The  division  of  the 
self  thus  determined,  and  thus  increasing  in 
our  modern  cultivation,  is  not  due  to  the 
chance  defects  of  this  or  of  that  more  or  less 
degenerate  individual.  Nor  is  it  due  merely 
to  a  man's  more  noxious  instincts.  This 
division  is  due  to  the  very  conditions  to  which 
the  development  of  self-consciousness  is  sub- 
ject, not  only  in  our  present  social  order,  but 
in  every  civilization  which  has  reached  as 
high  a  grade  of  self-consciousness  as  that 
which  Paul  observed  in  himself  and  in  his 
own  civilization. 

155 


^;i: 


',i;ar 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

X 

The   moral   burden   of   the   individual,   as 
Paul  conceives  it,  and  as  human  nature  makes 
it  necessary,  has  now  been  characterized.     The 
legend  of  Adam's  transgression  made  the  fall 
of  man  due  to  the  sort  of  self-consciousness, 
to  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  which  the 
crafty  critical   remarks  of  the  wise   serpent 
first  suggested  to  man,  and  which  the  result^ 
ing  transgression  simply  emphasized.     What 
Paul's    psychology,     translated     into    more 
modern   terms,    teaches,    is   that   the   moral 
self-consciousness  of  every  one  of  us  gets  its 
cultivation  from  our  social  order  through  a 
process  which  begins  by  craftily  awakening 
us,  as  the  serpent  did  Eve,  through  critical 
observations,  and  which  then  fascinates  our 
divided  will  by  giving  us  the  serpent's  coun- 
sels.    "Ye  shall  be  as  gods."     This  is  the  lore 
of  all  individualism,  and  the  vice  of  all  our 
worldly  social  ambitions.     The  resulting  dis- 
eases of  self-consciousness  are  due  to  the  in-^ 
most  nature  of  our  social  race. 

156 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

They  belong  to  its  very  essence  as  a  social 
race.  They  increase  with  cultivation.  The 
individual  cannot  escape  from  the  results  of 
them  through  any  deed  of  his  own.  For  his 
will  is  trained  by  a  process  which  taints  his 
conscience  with  the  original  sin  of  self-will, 
of  clever  hostility  to  the  very  social  order 
upon  which  he  constantly  grows,  more  and 
more  consciously  dependent. 

What  is  the  remedy  ^  What  is  the  escape  ? 
Paul's  answer  is  simple.  To  his  mind  a  new 
revelation  has  been  made,  from  a  spiritual 
realm  wholly  above  our  social  order  and  its 
conflicts.  Yet  this  revelation  is,  in  a  new 
way,  social.  For  it  tells  us:  "There  is  a 
certain  divinely  instituted  community.  It 
is  no  mere  collection  of  individuals,  with  laws 
and  customs  and  quarrels.  Nor  is  its  unity 
merely  that  of  a  mighty  but,  to  our  own  will, 
an  alien  power.  Its  indwelling  spirit  is  con- 
crete and  living,  but  is  also  a  loving  spirit. 
It  is  the  body  of  Christ.  The  risen  Lord 
dwells  in  it,  and  is  its  life.  It  is  as  much  a 
person  as  he  was  when  he  walked  the  earth. 

157 


THE    PROBLEM  OF   CHRISTIANITY 

And  he  is  as  much  the  spirit  of  that  community 
as  he  is  a  person.  Love  that  community; 
let  its  spirit,  through  this  love,  become  your 
own.  Let  its  Lord  be  your  Lord.  Be  one 
in  him  and  with  him  and  with  his  Church. 
And  lo  !  the  natural  self  is  dead.  The  new 
life  takes  possession  of  you.  You  are  a  new 
creature.  The  law  has  no  dominion  over 
you.  In  the  universal  community  you  live 
in  the  spirit ;  and  hence  for  the  only  self,  the 
only  self-consciousness,  the  only  knowledge 
of  your  own  deeds  which  you  possess  or 
tolerate:  these  are  one  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  and  of  the  community." 
\  Translated  into  the  terms  that  I  ventured 
to  use  in  our  last  lecture,  Paul's  doctrine  is 
that  salvation  comes  through  loyalty. 
Loyalty  involves  an  essentially  new  type  of 
self -consciousness,  —  the  consciousness  of  one 
who  loves  a  community  as  a  person.  Not 
social  training,  but  the  miracle  of  this  love, 
creates  the  new  type  of  self -consciousness. 

Only   (as  Paul  holds)   you  must  find  the 
universal  community  to  which  to  be  loyal; 

158 


MOR  A  LBURDENOFTHEIN  DIVIDUAL 

and  you  must  learn  to  know  its  Lord,  whose 
body  it  is,  and  whose  spirit  is  its  life. 

Paul  is  assured  that  he  knows  this  universal 
community  and  this  Lord.  But,  apart  from 
Paul's  religious  faith,  the  perfectly  human 
truth  remains  that  loyalty  (which  is  the  love 
of  a  community  conceived  as  a  person  on  a 
level  superior  to  that  of  any  human  individual) 
—  loyalty,  —  and  the  devotion  of  the  self  to 
the  cause  of  the  community,  —  loyalty,  is  the 
only  cure  for  the  natural  warfare  of  the  col- 
lective and  of  the  individual  will,  —  a  war- 
fare which  no  moral  cultivation  without 
loyalty  can  ever  end,  but  which  all  cultiva- 
tion, apart  from  such  devoted  and  trans- 
forming love  of  the  community,  only  inflames 
and  increases. 

Thus  the  second  of  the  essential  ideas  of 
Christianity  illustrates  the  first,  and  is  in 
turn  illumined  by  the  first.  This,  I  believe 
is  the  deeper  sense  and  truth  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  inherent  moral  taint  of  the  social 
individual. 


159 


IV 

THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 


^m 


LECTURE  IV 


THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 

nriHE  Christian  world  has  been  still 
J-  more  deeply  influenced  by  the  apostle 
Paul's  teaching  concerning  the  divine  grace 
that  saves,  than  by  his  account  of  the  moral 
burden  of  the  individual.  The  traditional 
lore  of  salvation  is  more  winning,  and,  in 
many  respects,  less  technical,  than  is  the 
Christian  teaching  regarding  our  lost  state. 

The  present  lecture  is  to  be  devoted  to  a 
study  of  some  aspects  of  the  doctrine  of  grace. 
Yet,  since  our  moral  burden,  and  our  escape 
from  that  burden,  are  matters  intimately  con- 
nected, we  shall  find  that  both  topics  belong  to 
the  exposition  of  the  same  essential  Christian 
idea,  and  that,  at  the  same  time,  they  throw  new 
light  upon  the  first  of  the  three  essential  Chris- 
tian ideas,  the  idea  of  the  universal  community. 
Our  present  task  will  therefore  enable  us  to 
reach  a  new  stage  in  our  survey  of  the  larger 
connections  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life. 

163 


f 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 


Christianity  is  most  familiarly  known  as  a 
religion  of  love,  and  this  view,  as  far  as  it 
extends,  is  a  true  view  of  Christianity.  Our 
second  lecture  has  shown  us,  however,  that 
this  characterization  is  inadequate,  because 
it  does  not  render  justly  clear  the  nature  of 
the  objects  to  which,  in  our  human  world, 
Christian  love  is  most  deeply  and  essentially 
devoted.  A  man  is  known  by  the  company 
that  he  keeps.  In  its  human  relations,  and 
apart  from  an  explicit  account  of  its  faith  con- 
cerning the  realm  of  the  gods,  or  concerning 
God,  a  religion  can  be  justly  estimated  only 
when  you  understand  what  kinds  and  grades 
of  human  beings  it  bids  you  recognize,  as  well 
as  what  it  counsels  you  to  do  in  presence  of 
the  beings  of  each  grade.  Now,  as  our  second 
lecture  endeavored  to  point  out,  there  are 
in  the  human  world  two  profoundly  different 
grades,  or  levels,  of  mental  beings,  —  namely, 
the  beings  that  we  usually  call  human  individ- 
uals, and  the  beings  that  we  call  communities. 

164 


Of  the  first  of  these  two  grades,  or  levels, 
of  human  beings,  any  one  man  whom  you  may 
choose  to  mention  is  an  example.  His  organ- 
ism is,  in  the  physical  world,  separate  from 
the  organisms  of  his  fellows.  The  expressive 
movements  of  this  organism,  his  behavior, 
his  gestures,  his  voice,  his  coherent  course  of 
conduct,  the  traces  that  his  deeds  leave  be- 
hind them,  —  these,  in  your  opinion,  make 
more  or  less  manifest  to  you  the  life  of  his 
mind.  And,  in  your  usual  opinion,  his  mind 
is,  on  the  whole,  at  least  as  separate  from  the 
minds  of  other  men,  as  his  organism,  and  his 
expressive  bodily  movements,  are  physically 
sundered  from  theirs. 

Of  the  second  of  these  two  levels  of  human 
beings,  a  well-trained  chorus,  or  an  orchestra^ 
at  a  concert ;  or  an  athletic  team,  or  a  rowing 
crew,  during  a  contest;  or  a  committee,  or 
a  board,  sitting  in  deliberation  upon  some 
matter  of  business ;  or  a  high  court  consisting 
of  several  members,  who  at  length  reach  what 
legally  constitutes  **the  decision  of  the  court," 
—  all  these  are  good  examples.     Each  one  of 

165 


m 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

these  is,  in  its  own  way,  a  community.  The 
vaster  communities,  real  and  ideal,  which  we 
mentioned,  by  way  of  illustration,  in  our 
second  lecture,  also  serve  as  instances  of  real 
beings  with  minds,  whose  grade  or  level  is 
not  that  of  the  ordinary  human  individuals. 

Any  highly  organized  community  —  so  in 
our  second  lecture  we  argued  —  is  as  truly  a 
human  being  as  you  and  I  are  individually 
human.  Only  a  community  is  not  what  we 
usually  call  an  individual  human  being;  be- 
cause it  has  no  one  separate  and  internally 
well-knit  physical  organism  of  its  own;  and 
because  its  mind,  if  you  attribute  to  it  any 
one  mind,  is  therefore  not  manifested  through 
the  expressive  movements  of  such  a  single 
separate  human   organism. 

Yet  there  are  reasons  for  attributing  to  a 
community  a  mind  of  its  own.  Some  of  these 
reasons  were  briefly  indicated  in  our  second 
lecture ;  and  they  will  call  for  a  further  scru- 
tiny hereafter.  Just  here  it  concerns  my  pur- 
pose simply  to  call  attention  to  the  former 
argument,  and  to  say,  that  the  difference  be- 

166 


THE    REALM    OF   GRACE 

tween   the  individual   human   beings  of  our 
ordinary    social    intercourse,    and    the    com- 
munities, is  a  difference  justly  characterized, 
in  my  opinion,  by  speaking  of  these  two  as ' 
grades  or  levels  of  human  life. 

The  communities  are  vastly  more  complex,  \ 
and,  in  many  ways,  are  also  immeasurably 
more  potent  and  enduring  than  are  the  indi- 
viduals. Their  mental  life  possesses,  as  Wundt 
has  pointed  out,  a  psychology  of  its  own,  which 
can  be  systematically  studied.  Their  mental 
existence  is  no  mere  creation  of  abstract 
thinking  or  of  metaphor;  and  is  no  more  a 
topic  for  mystical  insight,  or  for  fantastic 
speculation,  than  is  the  mental  existence  of 
an  individual  man.  As  empirical  facts,  com- 
munities are  known  to  us  by  their  deeds,  by 
their  workings,  by  their  intelligent  and  co- 
herent behavior,  just  as  the  minds  of  our 
individual  neighbors  are  known  to  us  through 
their  expressions. 

Considered  as  merely  natural  existences, 
communities,  like  individuals,  may  be  either 
good  or  evil,  beneficent  or  mischievous.     The 

167 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 


level  of  mental  existence  which  belongs  to 
communities  insures  their  complexity;  and 
renders  them,  in  general,  far  more  potent 
and,  for  certain  purposes  and  in  certain  of 
their  activities,  much  more  intelligent  than 
are  the  human  individuals  whose  separate 
physical  organisms  we  ordinarily  regard  as 
signs  of  so  many  separate  minds. 

But  a  community,  —  in  so  far  like  a  fallen 
angel,  —  may  be  as  base  and  depraved  as 
any  individual  man  can  become,  and  may  be 
far  worse  than  a  man.  Communities  may 
make  unjust  war,  may  enslave  mankind,  may 
deceive  and  betray  and  torment  as  basely 
as  do  individuals,  only  more  dangerously. 
The  question  whether  communities  are  or 
are  not  real  human  beings,  with  their  own  level 
of  mental  existence,  is  therefore  quite  dis- 
tinct from  the  question  as  to  what  worth 
this  or  that  community  possesses  in  the  spir- 
<itual  world.  And,  in  our  study  of  the  doctrine 
of  grace,  we  shall  find  how  intimately  the 
Christian  teaching  concerning  the  salvation 
of  the  individual  man  is  bound  up  with  the 

168 


Christian  definition,  both  of  the  saving  com- 
munity and  of  the  power  which,  according  to 
the  Christian  tradition,  has  redeemed  that 
community,  and  has  infused  divine  life  into 
the  level  of  human  existence  which  this  com- 
munity, and  not  any  merely  human  individual, 
occupies. 

n 

To  the  two  levels  of  human  mental  exist- 
ence correspond  two  possible  forms  of  love : 
love  for  human  individuals;  love  for  com- 
munities. In  our  second  lecture  we  spoke 
of  the  natural  fact  that  communities  can  be 
the  object  of  love;  and  that  this  love  may 
lead  to  the  complete  practical  devotion  of  an 
individual  to  the  community  which  he  loves. 
Such  vital  and  effective  love  of  an  individual 
for  a  community  constitutes  what  we  called, 
in  that  lecture.  Loyalty.  And  when,  in  our 
second  lecture,  the  conception  of  loyalty  as 
the  love  of  an  individual  for  a  being  that  is 
on  the  level  of  a  community  first  entered  our 
argument,  we  approached  this  conception  by 

169 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

using,  as  illustrations,  what  might  be  called 
either  the  more  natural  or  the  more  primitive 
types  of  loyalty,  —  types  such  as  grow  out  of 
family   life,   and   tribal   solidarity,   and   war. 
As    we   pointed   out   in   the   second   lecture, 
Christianity  is  essentially  a  religion  of  loyalty. 
We  have  learned  in  our  third  lecture  that,  for 
Christianity,   the  problem  of  loyalty  is  en- 
riched, and  meanwhile  made  more  difficult, 
by  the  nature  of  that  ideal  or  universal  com- 
munity to  which  Paul  first  invited  his  con- 
verts to  be  loyal. 

Paul  and  his  apostolic  Christians  were  not 
content  with  family  loyalty,  or  with  clan 
loyalty,  or  with  a  love  for  any  community 
that  they  conceived  as  merely  natural  in  its 
origin.  A  miracle,  as  they  held,  had  created 
the  body  of  Christ.  To  this  new  spiritual 
being,  whose  level  was  that  of  a  community, 
and  whose  membership  was  human,  but  whose 
origin  was,  in  their  opinion,  divine,  their  love 
and  their  life  were  due.  Christianity  was  the 
religion  of  loyalty  to  this  new  creation.  The 
idea  involved  has  since  remained,  with  all  its 

170 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

problems   and   tragedies,   essential   to   Chris- 
tianity. 

Our  study  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  indi- 
vidual has  now  prepared  us  for  a  new  insight 
into   the   special   problem   which,   ever   since 
Paul's    time.    Christian    loyalty    has    had    to 
solve.     This  is  no  longer  anywhere  nearly  as 
free  from  complications  as  are  the  problems 
which  family  loyalty  and  clan  loyalty  present, 
manifold  as  those  problems  of  natural  loyalty 
actually  are.     Even  the  idea  of  the  rational 
brotherhood    of    mankind,    of   the    universal 
community  as  the  Stoics  conceived  it,  presents 
no  problems  nearly  as  complex  as  is  the  prob- 
lem  which   the   Pauline  concept  of  charity, 
and  of  Christian  loyalty,  has  to  meet. 

For  Paul,  as  you  now  know,  finds  that  the 
individual  man  has  to  be  won  over,  not  to  a 
loyalty  which  at  first  seems,  to  the  fleshly 
mind,  natural,  but  to  an  essentially  new  life. 
The  natural  man  has  to  be  delivered  from  a 
doom  to  which  '*the  law"  only  binds  him 
faster,  the  more  he  seeks  to  escape.  And  this 
escape   involves   finding,    for   the   individual 

171 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

man,  a  community  to  which,  when  the  new 
life  comes,  he  is  to  be  thenceforth  loyal  as 
no  natural  clan  loyalty  or  family  loyalty 
could  make  him. 

The  power  that  gives  to  the  Christian  con- 
vert the  new  loyalty  is  what  Paul  calls  Grace. 
And  the  community  to  which,  when  grace 
saves  him,  the  convert  is  thenceforth  to  be 
loyal,  we  may  here  venture  to  call  by  a  name 
which  we  have  not  hitherto  used.  Let  this 
name  be  "The  Beloved  Community."  This 
is  another  name  for  what  we  before  called 
the  Universal  Community.  Only  now  the 
universal  community  will  appear  to  us  in  a 
new  light,  in  view  of  its  relations  to  the  doc- 
trine of  grace.  And  the  realm  of  this  Beloved 
Community,  whose  relations  Christianity  con- 
ceives, for  the  most  part,  in  supernatural 
terms,  will  constitute  what,  in  our  discussion, 
shall  be  meant  by  the  term  "The  Realm  of 
Grace." 


172 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

III 

If  we  suppose  that  the  two  levels  of  human 
mental   existence   have   both   of   them   been 
recognized   as   real,   and   that   hereupon   the 
problem  of  finding  an   ideally   lovable  com^ 
munity  has  been,  for  a  given  individual,  solved, 
so  that  this  individual  is  sure  of  his  love  and 
loyalty  for  the  community  which  has  won  his 
service,  then,  from  the  point  of  view  of  that 
individual,  the  two  levels  of  human  life  will 
indeed  be  no  longer  merely  distinguished  by 
their  complexity,  or  by  their  might,  or  by  their 
grade    of    intelligence.     Henceforth,    for    the 
loyal  soul,  the  distinction  between  the  levels, 
so  f^r  as  the  object  of  his  loyalty  is  concerned, 
will  be  a  distinction  in  value,  and  a  vast  one. 

The  beloved  community  embodies,  for  its 
lover,  values  which  no  human  individual, 
viewed  as  a  detached  being,  could  even  re- 
motely approach.  And  in  a  corresponding 
way,  the  love  which  inspires  the  loyal  soul  has 
been  transformed;  and  is  not  such  as  could 
be  given  to  a  detached  human  individual. 

173 


/ 


II 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  human  beings  whom  we  distinguish 
in  our  daily  Hfe,  and  recognize  through  the 
seeming  and  the  doings  of  their  separate  or- 
ganisms, are  real  indeed,  and  are  genuinely 
distinct  individuals.  But  when  we  love  them, 
our  love,  however  ideal  or  devoted,  has  its 
level  and  its  value  determined  by  their  own. 
And  if  this  love  for  human  individuals  is  the 
only  form  of  human  love  that  we  know,  both 
our  morality  and  our  religion  are  limited 
accordingly,  and  remain  on  a  correspond- 
ingly lower  level. 

Such  human  love  knows  its  objects  pre- 
cisely as  Paul  declared  that,  henceforth,  he 
would  no  longer  know  Christ,  —  namely, 
*' after  the  flesh."  Loyalty  knows  its  object 
(if  I  may  again  adapt  Paul's  word)  "after 
the  Spirit."  For  Paul's  expression  here  refers, 
in  so  far  as  he  speaks  of  human  objects  at  all, 
to  the  unity  of  the  spirit  which  he  conceived 
to  be  characteristic  of  the  Christian  com- 
munity, whereof  Christ  was,  to  the  Apostle's 
mind,  both  the  head  and  the  divine  life. 
Hence  you  see  how  vastly  significant,  for  our 

174 


'i 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

view  of  Christianity,  is  a  comprehension  of 
what  is  meant  by  religion  of  loyalty. 

With    this    indication    of    the    connections 
which  link  the  thoughts  of  our  lecture  on  the 
universal    community    with    the   task    which 
lies  next  in  our  path,  let  us  turn,  first  to  Paul's 
own  account  of  the  doctrine  of  grace,  and 
then  to  the  later  development  of  Paul's  teach- 
ings  into   those   views   about   the   Realm   of 
Grace  which  came  to  be  classic  for  the  later 
Christian    consciousness.     Our    own    interest 
in  all  these  matters  is  here  still  an  interest, 
first  in  the  foundation  which  the  Christian 
ideas  possess  in  human  nature,  and  secondly 
in  the  ethical  and  religious  values  which  are 
here  in  question.     And  we  still  postpone  any 
effort  to  pass  judgment  upon   metaphysical 
problems,  or  to  decide  the  truth  as  to  tradi- 
tional dogmas. 

IV 

Let  us  next  summarily  review  the  original 
and  distinctively  Pauline  doctrine,  both  of 
our  fallen  state  and  of  the  grace  which  saves. 

175 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 


The  last  lecture  furnished  the  materials  for 
such  a  review.  The  pith  of  the  matter  can  be 
expressed,  in  terms  of  purely  human  psychol- 
ogy, thus :  Man's  fallen  state  is  due  to  his 
nature  as  a  social  animal.  This  nature  is 
such  that  you  can  train  his  conscience  only  by 
awakening  his  self-will.  By  self-will,  I  here 
mean,  as  Paul  meant,  man's  conscious  and 
active  assertion  of  his  own  individual  desires, 
worth,  and  undertakings,  over  against  the  will 
of  his  fellow,  and  over  against  the  social  will. 
Another  name  for  this  sort  of  conscious  self- 
will  is  the  modern  term  "  individualism,"  when 
it  is  used  to  mean  the  tendency  to  prefer  what 
the  individual  man  demands  to  what  the  col- 
lective will  requires.  In  general,  and  upon  high 
levels  of  human  intelligence,  when  you  train  in- 
dividualism, you  also  train  collectivism ;  that 
is,  you  train  in  the  individual  a  respect  for  the 
collective  will.  And  it  belongs  to  Paul's  very 
deep  and  searching  insight  to  assert  that  these 
two  tendencies — the  tendency  towards  individ- 
ualism, and  that  towards  collectivism  —  do  not 
exclude,  but  intensify  and  inflame  each  other. 

176 


Training,  if  formally  successful  in  producing 
the  skilful  member  of  human  society,  breeds 
respect,  although  not  love,  for  "the  law,"  that 
is,  for  the  expression  of  the  collective  will. 
But  training  also  makes  the  individual  con- 
scious of  the  "other  law"  in  "his  members," 
which  "wars  against"  the  law  of  the  social 
will.  The  result  may  be,  for  his  outward 
conduct,  whatever  the  individual's  wits  and 
powers  make  it.  But  so  far  as  this  result  is 
due  to  cultivation  in  intelligent  conduct,  it 
inevitably  leads  to  an  inner  division  of  the 
self,  a  disease  of  self-consciousness,  which 
Paul  finds  to  be  the  curse  of  all  merely  natural 
human  civilization. 

This  curse  is  rooted  in  the  primal  consti- 
tution which  makes  man  social,  and  which 
adapts  him  to  win  his  intelligence  through 
social  conflicts  with  his  neighbors.  Hence 
the  curse  belongs  to  the  whole  "flesh"  of 
man;  for  by  "flesh"  Paul  nxeans  whatever 
first  expresses  itself  in  our  instincts  and  thus 
lies  at  the  basis  of  our  training,  and  so  of  our 
natural  life.     The  curse  aflSicts  equally  the 

M  177 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

race  and  the  individual.  Man  is  by  inherit- 
ance adapted  for  this  training  to  self-will  and 
to  inner  division. 

The  social  order,  in  training  individuals, 
therefore  breeds  conscious  sinners ;  and  sins 
both  in  them  and  against  them.  The  natural 
community  is,  in  its  united  collective  will,  a 
community  of  sin.  Its  state  is  made,  by  its 
vast  powers,  worse  than  that  of  the  individual. 
But  it  trains  the  individual  to  be  as  great  a 
sinner  as  his  powers  permit. 

If  you  need  illustrations,  Paul  teaches  you 
to  look  for  them  in  the  whole  social  order,  both 
of  Jews  and  of  Gentiles.  But  vices  and 
crimes,  frequent  as  they  are,  merely  illustrate 
the  principle.  The  disease  lies  much  deeper 
than  outward  conduct  can  show;  and  re- 
spectability of  behavior  brings  no  relief.  All 
are  under  the  curse.  Cultivation  increases 
the  curse.  The  individual  is  helpless  to  es- 
cape by  any  will  or  deed  of  his  own. 

The  only  escape  lies  in  Loyalty.  Loyalty, 
in  the  individual,  is  his  love  for  an  united  com- 
munity,  expressed  in   a  life  of  devotion  to 

178 


i 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 


that  community.  But  such  love  can  be  true 
Jove  only  if  the  united  community  both  exists 
and  is  lovable.  For  training  makes  self-will 
[fastidious,  and  abiding  love  for  a  community 
difficult. 

In  fact,  no  social  training  that  a  community 
can  give  to  its  members  can  train  such  love 
in  those  who  have  it  not,  or  who  do  not  win 
it  through  other  aid  than  their  training  sup- 
plies. And  no  social  will  that  men  can  in- 
telligently devise,  apart  from  previously  active 
and  effective  loyalty,  can  make  a  community 
lovable.  The  creation  of  the  truly  lovable 
community,  and  the  awakening  of  the  highly 
trained  individual  to  a  true  love  for  that 
community,  are,  to  Paul's  mind,  spiritual 
triumphs  beyond  the  wit  of  man  to  devise, 
and  beyond  the  power  of  man  to  accomplish. 
That  which  actually  accomplishes  these 
triumphs  is  what  Paul  means  by  the  divine 
grace. 


179 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    C  UllISTI  AN  IT  Y 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 


One  further  principle  as  to  the  human  work- 
ings of  this  grace  must  still  be  mentioned, 
in  order  to  complete  our  sketch  of  the  foun- 
dations which  our  actual  nature,  disordered 
though  it  be,  furnishes,  not  for  the  compre- 
hension of  this  miracle  of  saving  love,  but  for 
an  account  of  the  conditions  under  which 
the  miracle  takes  place,  so  far  as  these  condi- 
tions can  fall  under  our  human  observation. 

Natural  love  of  individuals  for  communities, 
as  we  saw  in  our  second  lecture,  appears  in 
case  of  family  loyalty,  and  in  case  of  patriot- 
ism ;  and  seems  to  involve  no  miracle  of  grace. 
But  such  love  of  an  individual  for  a  commu- 
nity, in  so  far  as  such  love  is  the  product  of  our 
ordinary  human  nature,  tends  to  be  limited 
or  hindered  by  the  influences  of  cultivation, 
and  is  blindly  strongest  in  those  who  have 
not  yet  reached  high  grades  of  cultivation. 
It  arises  as  mother-love  or  as  tribal  solidarity 
arises,  from  the  depths  of  our  still  unconscious 
social  nature.     The  infant  or  the  child  loves 

180 


its  home ;  the  mother,  her  babe ;  the  primi- 
tive man,  his  group. 

But  loyalty  of  the  type  that  is  in  question 
when  our  salvation,  in  Paul's  sense  of  salva- 
tion, is  to  be  won,  is  the  loyalty  which  springs 
up  after  the  individual  self-will  has  been  trained 
through  the  processes  just  characterized.  It 
is  the  loyalty  that  conquers  us,  even  when  we 
have  become  enemies  of  the  law.  It  finds  us 
as  such  enemies,  and  transforms  us.  It  is 
the  love  which  leads  the  already  alert  and  re- 
bellious self-will  to  devote  all  that  it  has  won 
to  the  cause  which  henceforth  is  to  remain, 
by  its  own  choice,  its  beloved. 

Such  loyalty  is  not  the  blind  instinctive 
aflfection  from  which  cultivation  inevitably 
alienates  us,  by  awakening  our  self-will.  It 
is  the  love  that  overcomes  the  already  fully 
awakened  individual.  We  cannot  choose  to 
fall  thus  in  love.  Onlv  when  once  thus  in 
love,  can  we  choose  to  remain  lovers. 

Now  such  love  comes  from  some  previous 
love  which  belongs  to  the  same  high  and  diflS- 
cult  grade.     The  origin  of  this  higher  form  of 

181 


i 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
loyalty  is  hard  to  trace,  unless  some  leader 
is  first  there,  to  be  the  source  of  loyalty  in 
other  men.  If  such  a  leader  there  is,  his  own 
loyalty  may  become,  through  his  example, 
the  origin  of  a  loyalty  in  which  the  men  of 
many  generations  may  find  salvation.  You 
are  first  made  loyal  through  the  power  of 
some  one  else  who  is  already  loyal. 

But  the  loyal  man  must  also  be,  as  we  have 
just  said,  a  member  of  a  lovable  community. 
How  can  such  a  community  originate  ?  The 
family,  as  we  have  also  remarked,  is  lovable 
to  the  dependent  child.  Yet  often  the  way- 
ward youth  is  socially  trained  to  a  point 
where  such  dependence,  just  because  he  has 
come  to  clear  self-consciousness,  seems  to 
him  unintelligible ;  and  herewith  his  father's 
house  ceases  to  be,  for  him,  any  longer 
lovable. 

Great  loyalty  —  loyalty  such  as  Paul  him- 
self had  in  mind  when  he  talked  of  divine 
grace  —  must  be  awakened  by  a  community 
sufficiently  lovable  to  win  the  enduring  devo- 
tion of  one  who,  like   Paul,  has  first   been 

J82 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

trained  to  possess  and  to  keep  an  obstinately 
critical  and  independent  attitude  of  spirit,  — 
an  attitude  such  as,  in  fact,  Paul  kept  to  the 
end  of  his  life,  side  by  side  with  his  own  loyalty, 
and  in  a  wondrous  harmony  therewith. 

Such  a  marvellous  union  of  unconquerable 
and  even  wilful  self-consciousness,  with  an 
absolute  loyalty  to  the  cause  of  his  life, 
breathes  in  every  word  of  Paul's  more  contro- 
versial outbursts,  as  well  as  in  all  of  his  more 
fervent  exhortations.  Such  loyalty  is  no 
mere  childhood  love  of  home.  It  comes 
only  as  a  rushing,  mighty  wind. 

In  order  to  be  thus  lovable  to  the  critical 
and  naturally  rebellious  soul,  the  Beloved 
Community  must  be,  quite  unlike  a  natural 
social  group,  whose  life  consists  of  laws  and 
quarrels,  of  a  collective  will,  and  of  individ- 
ual rebellion.  This  community  must  be  an 
union  of  members  who  first  love  it.  The 
unity  of  love  must  pervade  it,  before  the  indi- 
vidual member  can  find  it  lovable.  Yet 
unless  the  individuals  first  love  it,  how  can  the 
unity  of  love  come  to  pervade  it  ? 

133 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


The  origin  of  loyalty,  if  it  is  to  arise,— 
not   as    the   childhood    love   of   one's   home 
arises,  unconsciously  and  instinctively ;  but  as 
Paul's  love  for  the  Church  arises,  consciously 
and  with  a  saving  power,  —  in  the  life  of  one 
who  is  first  trained  to  all  the  conscious  en- 
mities   of    the    natural    social    order,  —  the 
origin  of  loyalty  seems  thus  to  resemble,  in  a 
measure,  the  origin  of  life,  as  the  modern  man 
views   that   problem.     A  living  being  is  the 
offspring  of  a  living  being.     And,  in  a  similar 
fashion,  highly  conscious  loyalty  presupposes 
a  previous  loyalty,   only  a  loyalty  of  even 
higher  level  than  its  own,  as  its  source.     Loy- 
/    alty   needs   for   its   beginnings   the   inspiring 
j    leader   who   teaches   by  the  example   of  his 
spirit.     But  the  leader,  in  order  to  inspire  to 
loyalty,  must  himself  be  loyal.     In  order  to  be 
loyal,  he  must  himself  have  found,  or  have 
founded,  his  lovable  community.     And   this, 
in   order   to   be   lovable,   and  a  community, 
must  already  consist  of  loyal  and  loving  mem- 
bers.   It  cannot  win  the  love  of  the  lost  soul 
who  is  to  be  saved,  unless  it  already  consists 

184 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

of  those  who  have  been  saved  by  their  love 
for  it.  One  moves  thus  in  a  circle.  Only 
some  miracle  of  grace  (as  it  would  seem)  can 
initiate  the  new  life,  either  in  the  individuals 
who  are  to  love  communities,  or  in  the  com- 
munities that  are  to  be  worthy  of  their  love. 

VI 

If  the  miracle  occurs,  and  then  works 
according  to  the  rules  which,  in  fact,  the  con- 
tagion of  love  usually  seems  to  follow,  the  one 
who  effects  the  first  great  transformation  and 
initiates  the  high  type  of  loyalty  in  the  dis- 
tracted social  world  must,  it  would  seem, 
combine  in  himself,  in  some  way,  the  nature 
which  a  highly  trained  social  individual  de- 
velops as  he  becomes  self-conscious,  with  the 
nature  which  a  community  possesses  when 
it  becomes  intimately  united  in  the  bonds  of 
brotherly  love,  so  that  it  is  "one  undivided 
soul  of  many  a  soul." 

For  the  new  life  of  loyalty,  if  it  first  appears 
at  all,  will  arise  as  a  bond  linking  many 
highly  self-conscious  and  mutually  estranged 

.     185 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

social  individuals  in  one ;  but  this  bond  can 
come  to  mean  anything  living  and  real  to 
these  individuals,  only  in  case  some  potent 
and  loyal  individual,  acting  as  leader,  first 
declares  that  for  him  it  is  real.  In  such  a 
leader,  and  in  his  spirit,  the  community  will 
begin  its  own  life,  if  the  leader  has  the  power 
to  create  what  he  loves. 

The  individual  who  initiates  this  process 
will  then  plausibly  appear  to  an  onlooker,  such 
as  Paul  was  when  he  was  converted,  to  be  at 
once  an  individual  and  the  spirit— the  very 
hfe  —  of  a  community.  But  his  origin  will  be 
inexplicable  in  terms  of  the  processes  which 
he  himself  originates.  His  power  will  come 
from  another  level  than  our  own.  And  of  the 
workings  of  this  grace,  when  it  has  appeared, 
we  can  chiefly  say  this:  Tnat  such  love  is 
propagated  by  personal  example,  although 
how,  we  cannot  explain. 

We  know  how  Paul  conceives  the  beginning 
of  the  new  life  wherein  Christian  salvation 
is  to  be  found.  This  beginning  he  refers  to 
the   work   of   Christ.     The   Master   was   an 

186 


THE    REALM   OF    GRACE 

individual  man.  To  Paul's  mind,  his  mission 
was  divine.  He  both  knew  and  loved  his 
community  before  it  existed  on  earth;  for 
his  foreknowledge  was  one  with  that  of  the 
God  whose  will  he  came  to  accomplish.  On 
earth  he  called  into  this  community  its  first 
members.  He  suffered  and  died  that  it  might 
have  life.  Through  his  death  and  in  his  life 
the  community  lives.  He  is  now  identical  with 
the  spirit  of  this  community.  This,  according 
to  Paul,  was  the  divine  grace  which  began 
the  process  of  salvation  for  man.  In  the 
individual  life  of  each  Christian  this  same  pro- 
cess appears  as  a  new  act  of  grace.  Its  out- 
come is  the  new  life  of  loyalty  to  which  the 
convert  is  henceforth  devoted. 

VII 

With  any  criticism  of  the  religious  beliefs 
of  Paul,  and  with  their  metaphysical  bearings, 
we  are  not  here  concerned.  What  we  have 
attempted,  in  this  sketch,  is  an  indication  of 
the  foundation  which  human  nature  furnishes 
for  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  divine  grace.     The 

187 


\ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

human  problem,  as  you  see,  when  it  is  viewed 
quite  apart  from  the  realm  of  the  gods,  is  the 
problem  of  the  value  and  the  origin  of  loyalty. 
The  value  of  loyalty  can  readily  be  de- 
fined in  simply  human  terms.  Man,  the 
social  being,  naturally,  and  in  one  sense  help- 
lessly, depends  on  his  communities.  Sundered 
from  them,  he  has  neither  worth  nor  wit,  but 
wanders  in  waste  places,  and,  when  he  re- 
turns, finds  the  lonely  house  of  his  individual 
life  empty,  swept,  and  garnished. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  his  communities, 
to  which  he  thus  owes  all  his  natural  powers, 
train  him  by  teaching  him  self-will,  and  so 
teach  him  the  arts  of  spiritual  hatred.  The 
result  is  distraction,  —  spiritual  death.  Es- 
cape through  any  mere  multitude  of  loves  for 
other  individuals  is  impossible.  For  such 
loves,  unless  they  are  united  by  some  supreme 
loyalty,  are  capricious  fondnesses  for  other 
individuals,  who,  by  nature  and  by  social 
training,  are  as  lonely  and  as  distracted  as  their 
lover  himself.  Mere  altruism  is  no  cure  for 
the  spiritual  disease  of  cultivation. 

188 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 


No  wonder,  then,  that  early  Buddhism, 
fully  sensible  of  the  disorders  of  self-will  and 
of  the  natural  consciousness,  sees  no  escape 
but  through  the  renunciation  of  all  that  is 
individual,  and  preaches  the  passionless  calm 
of  knowing  only  what  is  no  longer  a  self  at  all. 
If  birth  and  training  mean  only  distraction, 
why  not  look  for  the  cessation  of  all  birth, 
and  the  extinction  of  desire  ?  ^      / 

Loyalty,  if  it  comes  at  all,  has  the  value  of 
a  love  which  does  not  so  much  renounce  the 
individual  self  as  devote  the  self,  with  all  its 
consciousness  and  its  powers,  to  an  all-em- 
bracing unity  of  individuals  in  one  realm  of 
spiritual  harmony.  The  object  of  such  devo- 
tion is,  in  ideal,  the  community  which  is  ab- 
solutely lovable,  because  absolutely  united, 
conscious,  but  above  all  distractions  of  the 
separate  self-will  of  its  members.  Loyalty 
demands  many  members,  but  one  body; 
many  gifts,  but  one  spirit. 

The  value  of  this  ideal  lies  in  its  vision  of 
an  activity  which  is  endless,  but  always  at 
rest  in  its  own  harmony.     Such  a  vision,  as 

189 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Mr.  F.  C.  S.  Schiller  has  well  pointed  out, 
Aristotle  possessed  when,  in  dealing  with  quite 
another  problem  than  the  one  now  directly 
before  us,  he  defined  the  life  of  God,  —  the 
Energeia   of   the   unmoved    mover.     Such    a 
vision,  but  interpreted  in  terms  which  were 
quite  as  human  as  they  were  divine,  Paul 
possessed  when  he  wrote  to  the  Corinthians 
concerning  the  spiritual  gifts.     This  was  Paul's 
beatific  vision,  granted  him  even  while  he  was 
in  the  life  of  earthly  tribulation,  the  vision  of 
the  Charity  which  never  faileth,  —  the  vision 
of  Charity  as  still  the  greatest  of  the  Chris- 
tian graces  in  the  world  whereto  the  saved 
are  to  be  translated. 

The  realm  of  absolute  loyalty,  of  the  Paul- 
ine charity,  is  what  Christianity  opposes  to 
the  Buddhistic  Nirvana.  In  Nirvana  the 
Buddha  sees  all,  but  is  no  longer  an  individual, 
and  neither  desires  nor  wills  anything  what- 
ever. In  Paul's  vision  of  beatitude,  when  I 
shall  know  even  as  I  am  known,  an  endlessly 
restful  spiritual  activity,  the  activity  of  the 
glorified  and  triumphant  Church,  fills  all  the 

190 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 


scene.  It  is  an  activity  of  individuals  who 
still  will,  and  perform  the  deeds  of  love,  and 
endlessly  aim  to  renew  what  they  possess,  — 
the  life  of  the  perfected  and  perfectly  lovable 
community,  where  all  are  one  in  Christ. 

Paul's  vision  unites,  then,  Aristotle's  ideal 
of  the  divine  beatitude,  always  active  yet 
always  at  the  goal,  with  his  own  perfectly 
practical  and  concrete  ideal  of  what  the  united 
Church,  as  a  community,  should  be,  and  in 
the  perfect  state,  as  he  thinks,  will  be. 

Thus  the  value  of  the  loyal  life,  and  of  the 
love  of  the  ideal  community,  is  expressible 
in  perfectly  human  terms.  The  problem  of 
grace  is  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  loyalty ; 
and  is  again  a  perfectly  human  problem. 
Paul's  solution,  in  the  opening  of  his  letter 
to  the  Ephesians,  "By  grace  are  ye  saved,  and' 
that  not  of  yourselves  ;  it  is  the  gift  of  God,"j 
is  for  him  the  inevitable  translation  into  re- 
ligious speech  of  that  comment  upon  the  ori- 
gin of  loyalty  which  we  have  just,  in  sum-  ; 
mary  form,  stated.  The  origin  of  the  power 
of  grace  is  psychologically  inexplicable,  as  all   j 

191 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 
transforming  love  is.     The  object  to  which 
grace  directs  the  convert's  mind  is  above  the 
level  of  any  human  individual. 

The  realm    of   grace    is  the  realm  of  the 
powers  and  the  gifts  that  save,  by  thus  origi- 
nating and  sustaining  and  informing  the  loyal 
life.     This  realm  contains,  at  the  very  least, 
three  essentially  necessary  constituent  mem- 
bers:   First,  the  ideally  lovable  community  of 
many    individuals    in    one    spiritual    bond; 
secondly,  the  spirit  of  this  community,  which 
is  present  both  as  the  human  individual  whose 
power  originated  and  whose  example,  whose 
life  and  death,  have  led  and  still  guide  the 
community,  and  as  the  united  spiritual  activ- 
ity of  the  whole  community ;  thirdly.  Charity 
itself,  the  love  of  the  community  by  all  its 
members,  and  of  the  members  by  the  com- 
munity. 

To  the  religion  of  Paul,  all  these  things  must 
be  divine.  They  all  have  their  perfectly 
human  correlate  and  foundation  wherever 
the  loyal   life  exists. 


192 


'I 


THE   REALM  OF   GRACE 

vin 

We  now  may  see  how  the  characterization 
of  Christianity  as  not  only  a  religion  of  love, 
but  as  also,  in  essence,  a  religion  of  loyalty, 
tends  to  throw  light  upon  some  of  the  other- 
wise most  difficult  aspects  of  the  problem  of 
Christianity.  We  can  already  predict  how 
great  this  light,  if  it  grows,  promises  to  become. 

Christianity  is  not  the  only  religion  in 
whose  conceptions  and  experiences  a  com- 
munity has  been  central.  Loyalty  has  not 
left  itself  without  a  witness  in  many  ages  of 
human  life,  and  in  many  peoples.  And  all 
the  higher  forms  of  loyalty  are,  in  their  spirit, 
religious;  for  they  rest  upon  the  discovery, 
or  upon  the  faith,  that,  in  all  the  darkness  of 
our  earthly  existence,  we  individual  human 
beings,  separate  as  our  organisms  seem  in 
their  physical  weakness,  and  sundered  as  our 
souls  appear  by  their  narrowness,  and  by  their 
diverse  loves  and  fortunes,  are  not  as  much 
alone,  and  not  as  helpless,  in  our  chaos  of  di- 
vided will,  as  we  seem. 

o  193 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

For  we  are  members  one  of  another,  and 
members,  too,  of  a  real  life  that,  although 
human,  is  nevertheless,   when  it  is  lovable, 
also  above  the  level  upon  which  we,  the  sepa- 
rate individuals,  live  our  existence.     By  our 
organisms  and  by  our  individual  divisions  of 
knowledge  and  of  purpose,  we  are  chained  to 
an  order  of  nature.     By  our  loyalty,  and  by 
the  real  communities  to  which  we  are  worthily 
loyal,  we  are  linked  with  a  level  of  mental 
existence  such  that,  when  compared  with  our 
individual  existence,  this  higher  level  lies  in 
the  direction   of  the  divine.     Whatever  the 
origin   of  men's   ideals   of  their  gods,   there 
should  be  no  doubt  that  these  gods  have  often 
been  conceived,  by  their  worshippers,  as  the 
representatives  of  some  human  community, 
and   as    in    some   sense   identical    with    that 
community. 

But  loyalty  exists  in  countless  forms  and 
gradations.  Christianity  is  characterized  not 
only  by  the  universality  of  the  ideal  com- 
munity to  which,  in  its  greatest  deeds  and 
ages,  it  has,  according  to  its  intent,  been  loyal ; 

134 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

but  also  by  the  depth  and  by  the  practical 
intensity  and  the  efficacy  of  the  love  towards 
this  community  which  has  inspired  its  most 
representative  leaders  and  reformers ;  and, 
finally,  by  the  profoundly  significant  doc- 
trines and  customs  to  which  it  has  been  led 
in  the  course  of  its  efforts  to  identify  the 
being  of  its  ideal  community  with  the  being  of 
God. 

Other  religions  have  been  inspired  by  loyalty. 
Other  religions  have  identified  a  community 
with  a  divine  being.  And,  occasionally,  — 
yes,  as  the  world  has  grown  wiser  and  more 
united,  increasingly,  —  non-Christian  thinking 
and  non-Christian  religion  have  conceived  an 
ideal  community  as  inclusive  as  mankind, 
or  as  inclusive  as  the  whole  realm  of  beings 
with  minds,  however  vast  that  realm  may  be. 

But,  historically  speaking,  Christianity  has 
been  distinguished  by  the  concreteness  and 
intensity  with  which,  in  the  early  stages  of 
its  growth,  it  grasped,  loved,  and  served  its 
own  ideal  of  the  visible  community,  supposed 
to  be  universal,   which  it  called  its  Church. 

195 


4 

.1 
,  ) 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

It  has  further  been  contrasted  with  other 
religions  by  the  skill  with  which  it  gradually 
revised  its  views  of  the  divine  nature,  in  order 
to  be  able  to  identify  the  spirit  that,  as  it 
believed,  guided,  inspired,  and  ruled  this 
Church,  with  the  spirit  of  the  one  whom  it  had 
come  to  worship  as  its  risen  Lord. 

IX 

If  we  bear  these  facts  in  mind,  there  is 
much  in  the  otherwise  so  difficult  history  of 
Christian  dogma  which  we  can  easily  see  in  a 
new  light.     I   myself  am  far  from   being  a 
technical  theologian,  and,  in  coming  to  the 
few  fragments   of  an   understanding   of  the 
meaning  of  the  history   of  dogma  which  I 
possess,   I  owe  much  to   views   such  as,   in 
England,    Professor   Percy   Gardner   has  set 
forth,    both    in    his    earlier    discussions,    and 
notably  in  his  recent  book  on  "The  Religious 
Experience  of  the  Apostle  Paul."     I  also  owe 
new  light  to  the  remarkable  conclusions  which 
Professor   Troeltsch  of  Heidelberg  states,  at 
the  close  of  his  recently  published  volume  on 

196 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

"The  Social  Doctrines  of  the  Christian 
Churches."  ^  I  shall  make  no  endeavor  in 
this  place  to  deal  with  those  technical  aspects 
of  the  history  of  dogma  which  lie  beyond  my 
province  as  a  philosophical  student  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life.  But  if  I  attempt 
to  restate  a  very  few  of  the  results  of  others 
in  terms  of  that  view  of  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tian loyalty  which  does  concern  me,  my  word, 
at  this  stage  of  our  discussion,  must  be  as 
follows :  — 

Jesus  unquestionably  taught,  in  the  best- 
attested,  and  in  the  best-known,  of  his  say- 
ings, love  for  all  individual  human  beings. 
But  he  taught  this  as  an  organic  part  of  his 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The 
individual  whom  you  are  bidden  to  love  as 
your  brother  and  your  neighbor  is,  even  while 
Jesus  depicts  him,  transformed  before  your 
eyes.  For,  first,  he  is  no  longer  the  separate 
organism  with  a  separate  mind  and  a  de- 
tached being  and  destiny,  whom  you  ordi- 


1  "  Die  sozialen  Lehren  der  Christlichen  Kirchen  und  Gnippen." 
Tubingen,  1912. 

197 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

narily  loathe  if  he  is  your  enemy,  and  resist  if 
he  endangers  or  oppresses  you.     No,  —  when 
he    asks    your    aid,  —  though    he    be    "the 
least    of    these    my    brethren"  —  he    speaks 
with    the    voice    of    the    judge    of    all    men, 
with  the  voice  that  you  hope  to  hear  saying : 
"Come  ye  blessed  of  my  Father,  for  I  was 
hungered  and  ye  gave  me  meat."     In  other 
words,  the  real  man,  whom  your  eyes  only 
seem  to  see,  but  whom  on  the  level  of  ordinary 
human    intercourse   you    simply   ignore,    ac- 
tually  belongs  to  another  level   of  spiritual 
existence,  above  the  level  of  our  present  life 
of  divisions.     The  mystery  of  the  real  being 
of  this  man  is  open  only  to  the  divine  Love. 

If  you  view  your  neighbor  as  your  Father 
would  have  you  view  him,  you  view  him  not 
only  as  God's  image,  but  also  as  God's  will 
and  God's  love.  If  one  asks  for  further  light 
as  to  how  the  divine  love  views  this  man, 
the  answer  of  Jesus,  in  the  parables  is,  in 
substance,  that  this  man  is  a  member  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

The   Kingdom  of  Heaven   is   obviously   a. 

198 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

community.     But  this  community  is  itself  a 
mystery,  —  soon  to  be  revealed,  —  but  so  far 
in  the  visible  world,  of  which  Jesus  speaks, 
not  yet  to  be  discovered.     This  Kingdom  is  a 
treasure  hid  in  a  field.     Its  Master  has  gone 
into   a  far  country.     Watch   and   be  ready. 
The  Lord  will  soon  return.     The  doctrine  of 
Christian  love,  as  thus  taught  by  Jesus,  so  far  as 
the  records  guide  us,  implies  loyalty  to  the 
Kingdom ;  but  expresses  itself  in  forms  which 
demand  further  interpretation,  and  which  the 
Master  intended  to  have  further  interpreted. 
Now  the  apostolic  churches  held  that  those 
visions  of  the  risen  Lord,  upon  the  memory 
and  report  of  which  their  life  as  communities 
was  so  largely  based,  had  begun  for  them 
this  further  interpretation.     For  them  Chris- 
tian loyalty   soon  became  explicit;    because 
their  community  became  visible.     And  they 
believed  their  community  to  be  the  realization 
of  the  Kingdom ;  because  they  were  sure  that 
their  risen  Lord,  whom  the  reported  and  re- 
corded visions  had  shown,  was  henceforth  in 
their  midst  as  the  spirit  of  this  community. 

199 


'I. 


I 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  realm  of  grace,  thus  present  to  the 
Christian  consciousness,  needed  to  be  further 
explored.     The    explorers    were    those    who 
helped  to  define  dogmas.     The  later  develop- 
ment of  the  principal  dogmas  of  the  post- 
apostolic  Church  was  due  to  a  process  in  which, 
as  Professor   Troeltsch  persuasively    insists,^ 
speculation  and  the  use  of  the  results  of  an- 
cient philosophy  (however  skilful  and  learned 
such  processes  might  be),  were  in  all  the  great 
crises  of  the  history  of  doctrine  wholly  sub- 
ordinate to  practical  religious  motives.^ 

»  In  the  summary  of  his  "Ergebnisse,"  on  p.  967.  op.  ciL,  Troeltsch 
says : — 

"Es  erhellt  die   Abhangigkeit  der  ganzen   christlichen   Vorstel- 
lungswelt  imd  des  Dogmas  von  den  soziologischen  Grundbedingungen, 
von    der    jeweiligen    Gemeinschaftsidee.     Das    einzige    besondere 
christiiche  Ur-Dogma,  das  Dogma  von  der  Gottlichkeit  des  Christus, 
entsprang  erst  aus  dem  Christuskult  und  dieser  wiederum  aus  der 
Notwendigkeit   der   Zusammenschanmg   der   Gemeinde   des   neuen 
Geistes.     Der  Christuskult  ist  der  Organisationspunkt  einer  ehrist- 
hchen  Gemeinschaft  und  der  Schopfer  des  christlichen  Dogmas.     Da 
der  Kultgott  der  Christen,   nicht   ^ie  ein   anderer  Mysteriengott 
polytheistisch  zu  verstehen  ist,  sondem  die  erlosende  Offenbarung  des 
monotheistischen  Gottes  der  Propheten  darstellt,  so  wird  aus  dem 
Chnstusdogma     das    Trinitatsdogma.     Alle    philosophischen     mid 
mythologischen  Entlehnungen  sind  nur  Mittel  fUr  diesen  aus  der 
mneren    xXotwendigkeit    der    christlichen     Kultgemeinschaft    sich 
bildenden  Gedanken."     My  own  text,  at  this  point,  interprets  the 

200 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

To  use  the  phraseology  that  I  myself  am 
obliged  to  prefer :  The  common  sense  of  the 
Christian  Church  had  three  problems  to  solve. 
First :  It  was  loyal  to  the  universal  spiritual 
community ;  and  upon  this  loyalty,  according 
to  its  view,  salvation  depended.  But  this  uni- 
versal community  must  be  something  concrete 
and  practically  eflScacious.  Hence  the  visible 
Church  had  to  be  organized  as  the  appearance 
on  earth  of  God's  Kingdom.  For  what  the 
parables  had  left  mysterious  about  the  object 
and  the  life  of  love,  an  authoritative  interpreta- 
tion, valid  for  the  believers  of  those  times,  must 
be  found,  and  was  found  in  the  visible  Church. 

Secondly,  The  life,  the  unity,  the  spirit 
of  the  Church  had  meanwhile  to  be  identified 
with  the  person  and  with  the  spirit  of  the  risen 
and  ascended  Lord,  whom  the  visions  of  the 
first  disciples  had  made  henceforth  a  central 
fact  in  the  belief  of  the  Church. 

results  which  Troeltsch  has  reached,  but  also  translates  them  into  the 
terms  of  my  own  philosophy  of  loyalty.  Lectures  VII,  \1II,  and  XV 
will  show,  in  much  greater  fulness  than  is  here  possible,  how  far- 
reaching  are  the  consequences  which  follow  from  accepting  the  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity  here  merely  sketched. 

201 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  supernatural  being  whose  body  was 
now  the  Church,  whose  spirit  was  thus  identi- 
fied with  the  will  and  with  the  mind  of  a  com- 
munity, had  once,  as  man,  walked  the  earth, 
had  really  sujQFered  and  died.  But  since  he 
had  risen  and  ascended,  henceforth  —  pre- 
cisely because  he  was  as  the  spirit  whose  body 
was  this  community,  the  Church  — he  was 
divine.  Such  was  the  essential  article  of  the 
new  faith. 

Paul  had  already  taught  this.  This  very 
doctrine,  in  its  further  development,  must  be 
kept  by  the  Church  as  concrete  as  the  recorded 
life  of  the  Master  had  been,  as  close  to  real 
life  as  the  work  of  the  visible  Church  was,  and 
as  true  to  the  faith  in  the  divine  unity  and 
destiny  of  the  universal  community,  as  Chris- 
tian loyalty  in  all  those  formative  centuries 
remained. 

And  yet  all  this  must  also  be  held  in  touch 
with  that  doctrine  of  the  unity,  the  personality, 
and  the  ineffable  transcendence  of  God, — 
that  doctrine  which  was  the  heritage  of  the 
Church,  both  from  the  religion  of  Israel  and 

202 


THE    REALM   OF    GRACE 

from  the  wisdom  of  Greece.  Speaking  in  a 
purely  historical  and  human  sense,  the  dogma 
of  the  Trinity  was  the  psychologically  in- 
evitable effort  at  a  solution  of  this  complex 
but  intensely  practical  problem. 

Loyalty  to  the  community  inspired  this 
solution.  The  problem  of  the  two  natures  of 
Christ,  divine  and  human,  was  also  psycho- 
logically forced  upon  Christianity  by  the  very 
problem  of  the  two  levels  of  our  human  exist- 
ence which  I  have  just  sketched.^ 

I  speak  still,  not  of  the  truth,  but  of  the 
psychological  motives  of  the  dogma.  The 
problem  of  the  two  levels  of  human  exist- 
ence is  concrete,  is  practical,  and  exists  for 
all  of  us.  Every  man  who  learns  what  the 
true  goal  of  life  is  must  live  this  twofold 
existence,  —  as  separate  individual,  limited 
by  the  flesh  of  this  maladjusted  and  dying 
organism,  —  yet  also  as  member  of  a  spiritual 
community  which,  if  loyal,  he  loves,  and  in 


*The  relation  of  the  traditional  doctrine  of  the  "two  natures"  to 
my  present  thesis  regarding  the  "two  levels"  is  something  which  I 
am  solely  responsible  for  asserting. 

203 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

which,  in  so  far  as  he  is  loyal,  he  knows  that 
his  only  true  life  is  hidden,  and  is  lived. 

But  for  Christianity  this  problem  of  the 
two  levels  was  vital,  not  only  for  the  individ- 
ual Christian,  but  also  for  the  interpretation 
of  the  person  of  Christ,  and  for  the  life  of  the 
Church.      Since,   for   historical   and  psycho- 
logical reasons,  the  solution  of  this  problem 
could  not  be,  for  Christianity,  either  poly- 
theistic  or   disloyal    in    its    spirit,    the    only 
humanly   natural   course   was,   first,   to   dis- 
tinguish the  transcendent  divine  being  from 
the  concretely  active  spirit  whose  daily  work 
was  that  of  the  Church,  and  then  also  to  dis- 
tinguish both  of  these  from  the  human  in- 
dividuality  of  the  Master  who  had  taught 
the  mystery  of  the  Kingdom,  and  who  had 
then  suffered  and  died,  and,  as  was  believed, 
had  risen  to  create  his  Church.     One  had,  I 
say,  clearly  to  distinguish  all  these;    to  de- 
clare them  all  to  be  perfectly  real  facts.     And 
then  one  had  to  unite  and,  in  form,  to  identify 
them  all,  by  means  of  dogmas  which  were 
much  less  merely  ingenious  speculations  than 

204 


c 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

earnest  resolutions  to  act  and  to  believe  what- 
ever the  loyal  Christian  life  and  the  work  of 
the  Church  demanded  for  the  unity  of  human- 
ity and  for  the  salvation  of  the  world. 

The  result  may  be  estimated  philosophically, 
as  one  may  judge  to  be  reasonable.  I  have 
said  nothing  about  the  metaphysical  truth 
of  these  dogmas.  But  the  result  should  not 
be  judged  as  due  to  merely  speculative  sub- 
tleties, or  as  a  practical  degeneration  of  the 
spirit  of  the  early  Church. 

The  common  sense  of  the  Church  was  simply 
doing  its  best  to  express  the  meaning  of  its 
loyalty.  This  loyalty  had  its  spiritual  com- 
munity and  its  human  master.  And  its  prob- 
lems were  the  problems  of  all  loyalty.  And 
it  was  as  a  religion  of  loyalty,  with  a  com- 
munity, a  Lord,  and  a  Spirit  to  interpret,  that 
Christianity  was  led  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
two  natures  of  Christ,  and  to  the  dogma  of  the 
Trinity. 


205 


TUE  PUOBLEM    OF    CH  IlISTI  ANIT  Y 


X 

I 

The  psychological  motives  and  the  histori 
cal  background  of  the  capital  dogmas  of  thel 
Church  are  therefore  best  to  be  understood 
in  the  light  of  the  conception  of  the  universal 
community,  if  only  one  recognizes  the  his-1 
torical  fact  that  the  Christian  consciousness 
was  by  purely  human  motives  obliged  to  de-  '' 
fine  its  community  as  due  to  the  work  of  the 
Master  who  once  walked  the  earth. 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  the  Fourth  : 
Gospel,  wherein  the  Pauline  conception  of  the  1 
Church  as  the  body  of  Christ,  and  of  Christ 
as  the  spirit  of  the  Church,  is  perfectly  united 
with  the  idea  of  the  divine  Word  made  flesh, 
is,  of  all  the  Gospels,  the  one  which,  although 
much  the  farthest  from  the  literal  history  of 
the  human  Master's  earthly  words  and  deeds, 
has  been,  in  its  wholeness,  the  nearest  to  the 
heart  of  the  Christian  world  during  many 
centuries. 

The  Synoptic  Gospels  stir  the  spirits  of 
men  by  the  single  word  or  saying  of  Jesus,  by 

206 


THE    REALM    OF    GRACE 

the  recorded  parable,  or  by  the  impressive 
incident,  be  this  incident  a  legend,  or  a  frag- 
ment of  literally  true  portrayal  (we  often 
know  not  which). 

But  the  Fourth  Gospel  impresses  us  most  in 
its  wholeness.  This  Gospel  faces  the  central 
practical  problem  of  Christianity,  — the  prob- 
lem of  grace,  the  transformation  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  individual  man.  This  trans- 
formation is  to  save  him  by  making  him  a 
dwellei  in  the  realm  which  is  at  once  inacces- 
sibly above  his  merely  natural  level  as  an 
individual,  and  yet  daily  near  to  whatever 
gives  to  his  otherwise  ruined  natural  exist- 
ence its  entire  value.  This  realm  is  the 
realm  of  the  level  of  the  united  and  lovable 
community. 

From  this  realm  comes  all  saving  grace. 
Wherever  two  or  three  are  gathered  together 
in  a  genuine  unity  of  spirit,  —  this  realm 
does  indeed  begin  to  display  itself.  Other 
religions  besides  Christianity  have  illustrated 
that  fact.  And  whatever,  apart  -from  legend 
on  the  one  hand,  and  speculative  interprets- 

207 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 


M 


tion  on  the  other,  we  human  beings  can  ap- 
preciate, in  a  vital  sense,  concerning  the 
meaning  of  what  we  call  divine,  we  learn 
through  such  love  for  communities  as  arises 
from  the  companionships  of  those  who  are 
thus  joined. 

This  truth  humanity  at  large  has  long  since 
possessed  in  countless  expressions  and  dis- 
guises. But  the  fortune  of  Christianity  led 
the  Church  to  owe  its  foundation  to  teachings, 
to  events,  to  visions,  and,  above  all,  to  a 
practical  devotion,  which,  from  the  first, 
required  the  faithful  to  identify  a  human  in- 
dividual with  the  saving  spirit  of  a  community, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  a  community  which  was 
also  conceived  as  wholly  divine. 

The  union  of  the  concrete  and  the  ineflFable 
which  hereupon  resulted,  —  the  union  of  what 
touches  the  human  heart  and  stirs  the  soul  as 
only  the  voice  of  a  living  individual  leader 
can  touch  it,  —  the  complete  union  of  this 
with  the  greatest  and  most  inspiring  of  human 
mysteries,  —  the  mystery  of  loving  member- 
ship in  a  community  whose  meaning  seems 

208 


divine,  —  this  union  became  the  central  in- 
terest of  Christianity. 

Apart  from  what  is  specifically  Christian  in 
belief,  such  union  of  the  two  levels  has  its 
place  in  our  daily  lives  wherever  the  loyalty  of 
an  individual  leader  shows  to  other  men  the 
way  that  leads  them  to  the  realm  of  the 
spirit.  And  whenever  that  union  takes  place, 
the  divine  and  the  human  seem  to  come  into 
touch  with  each  other  as  elsewhere  they  never 
do. 

The  mystery  of  loyalty,  as  Paul  well  knew, 
is  the  typical  mystery  of  grace.  It  is,  in 
another  guise,  the  mystery  of  the  incarnation. 
According  to  the  mind  of  the  early  Christian 
Church,  one  individual  had  solved  that  mys- 
tery for  all  men. 

He  had  risen  from  the  shameful  death  that, 
for  Christianity,  as  for  its  greatest  rival  Bud- 
dhism, is  not  only  the  inevitable  but  the  just 
doom  of  whoever  is  born  on  the  natural  level 
of  the  human  individual ;  —  he  had  ascended 
to  the  level  of  the  Spirit,  and  had  become,  in 
the  belief  of  the  faithful,  the  spirit  of  a  com- 

209 


THE   PROBLEM    OP    CHRISTIANITY 


munity  whose  boundaries  were  coextensive 
with  the  world,  and  of  whose  dominion  there 
was  to  be  no  end. 

The  Fourth  Gospel  conceives  this  union 
of  the  two  levels  of  spiritual  existence  with  a 
perfect  mastery  at  once  of  the  exalted  poetry 
and  of  the  definitely  practical  concreteness  of 
the  idea,  and  of  the  experiences  which  make 
it  known  to  us.  That  the  conception  of  the 
Logos  —  a  philosophical  conception  of  Greek 
origin  —  is  used  as  the  vehicle  of  the  portrayal 
is,  for  our  present  purpose,  a  fact  of  subor- 
dinate importance. 

What  is  most  significant  is  the  direct  and 
vital  grasp  of  the  new  problem,  as  it  appears 
in  the  Fourth  Gospel.  The  spirit  of  the  infant 
Church  is  here  expressed  with  such  unity  and 
such  pathos  that  all  the  complications  of  the 
new  ideas  vanish  ;  and  one  sees  only  the  sym- 
bol of  the  perfectly  literal  and  perfectly 
human  triumph  of  the  Spirit,  —  a  triumph 
which  can  appear  only  in  this  form  of  the 
uniting  of  the  level  of  individuality  with  the 
level  of  perfect  loyalty. 

210 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

In  the  tale  here  presented,  the  dust  of  our 
natural  divisions  is  stirred  into  new  life. 
From  the  tomb  of  individual  banishment  into 
which  the  divine  has  freely  descended,  from 
the  wreck  to  which  every  human  individual  is 
justly  doomed,  the  Word  made  flesh  arises. 

But  "Who  is  this  King  of  Glory .?"  He  is, 
in  this  portrayal,  the  one  who  says:  "I 
am  the  vine.  Ye  are  the  branches."  The 
Spirit  of  the  community  speaks.  The  Pauline 
metaphor  appears  in  a  new  expression.  But 
it  is  uttered  not  by  the  believer,  but  by  the 
being  who  has  solved  the  mystery  of  the 
union  of  the  self  and  the  community.  He 
speaks  to  individuals  who  have  not  yet  reached 
that  union.     He  comforts  them:  — 

"Peace  I  leave  with  you;  my  peace  I  give 
unto  you;  not  as  the  world  giveth  give  I 
unto  you."  This  is  the  voice  of  the  saving 
community  to  the  troubled  soul  of  the  lonely 
individual. 

"Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled,  neither 
let  it  be  fearful.  Ye  have  heard  how  I  said 
to  you,  I  go   away,  and    I   come   to  you/* 

211 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

"Abide  in  me,  and  I  in  you.  As  the  branch 
cannot  bear  fruit  of  itself  except  it  abide  in  the 
vine;    so  neither  can  ye,  except  ye  abide  in 


me. 


>> 


"These  things  have  I  spoken  unto  you  in 
proverbs :  The  hour  cometh,  when  I  shall 
no  more  speak  unto  you  in  proverbs,  but  shall 
tell  yoii  plainly  of  the  Father."  "  In  the  world 
ye  shall  have  tribulation ;  but  be  of  good  cheer; 
I  have  overcome  the  world." 

The  loyal  alone  know  whose  world  this  is, 
and  for  whom.  In  the  prayer  with  which  this 
farewell  closes,  the  Jesus  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
prays  :  "  Holy  Father,  keep  them  in  thy  name 
which  thou  hast  given  me,  that  they  may  be 
one,  even  as  we  are  one." 

These  are  explicitly  the  words  of  the  spirit 
of  the  universal  community,  whom  mortal 
eyes  no  longer  see,  and  whom,  in  a  lonely 
world  of  tribulation,  men  who  are  doomed  to 
die  now  miss  with  grief  and  expect  with  long- 
ing. But:  "Hast  thou  been  so  long  with 
me,  and  hast  not  known  me  ?'' 

In  such  words  the  Fourth  Gospel  embodies 

212 


I 


I 


THE    REALM    OF    GRACE 

the  living  spirit  of  the  lovable  community. 
This  is  what  the  loyal  soul  knows. 

That  is  why  I  venture  to  say  in  my  own 
words  (though  I  am  neither  apologist,  nor 
Christian  preacher,  nor  theologian),  that 
Christianity  is  a  religion  not  only  of  love,  but 
also  of  loyalty.  And  that  is  why  the  Fourth 
Gospel  tells  us  the  essential  ideas  both  of 
Christianity,  and  of  the  Christian  Realm  of 
Grace,  more  fully  than  do  the  parables,  unless 
you  choose  to  read  the  parables  as  the  voice 
of  the  Spirit  of  the  Church. 

In  all  this  I  have  meant  to  say,  and  have 
said,  nothing  whatever  about  the  truth,  or 
about  the  metaphysical  bases  of  Christian 
dogma. 

I  have  been  characterizing  the  human 
motives  that  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  realm  of  grace,  and  have  been  pointing 
out  the  ethical  and  religious  value  of  these 
motives. 


213 


TIME  AND  GUILT 


., 


LECTURE  V 


TIME  AND  GUILT 


TN  Matthew  Arnold's  essay  on  *'St.  Paul 
J-  and  Protestantism,"  there  is  a  well-known 
passage  from  which  I  may  quote  a  few  words 
to  serve  as  a  text  for  the  present  lecture. 
These  words  express  what  many  would  call  a 
typical  modern  view  of  an  ancient  problem. 


In  this  essay,  just  before  the  words  which  I 
shall  quote,  Matthew  Arnold  has  been  speak- 
ing of  the  relation  between  Paul's  moral  ex- 
periences and  their  religious  interpretation, 
as  the  Apostle  formulates  it  in  the  epistle  to 
the  Romans.  Referring  to  a  somewhat  earlier 
stage  of  his  own  argument,  Arnold  here  says : 
"We  left  Paul  in  collision  with  a  fact  of 
human  nature,  but  in  itself  a  sterile  fact,  a 
fact  upon  which  it  is  possible  to  dwell  too 
long,  although  Puritanism,  thinking  this  im- 
possible,   has    remained    intensely    absorbed 

217 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  the  contemplation  of  it,  and  indeed  has 
never  properly  got  beyond  it,  —  the  sense  of 
sin."  "Sin,"  continues  Matthew  Arnold,  **is 
not  a  monster  to  be  mused  on,  but  an  impo- 
tence to  be  got  rid  of.  All  thinking  about  it, 
beyond  what  is  indispensable  for  the  firm 
effort  to  get  rid  of  it,  is  waste  of  energy  and 
waste  of  time.  We  then  enter  that  element  of 
morbid  and  subjective  brooding,  in  which  so 
many  have  perished.  This  sense  of  sin,  how- 
ever, it  is  also  possible  to  have  not  strongly 
enough  to  beget  the  firm  effort  to  get  rid  of  it ; 
and  the  Greeks,  with  all  their  great  gifts, 
had  this  sense  not  strongly  enough ;  its 
strength  in  the  Hebrew  people  is  one  of  this 
people's  mainsprings.  And  no  Hebrew 
prophet  or  psalmist  felt  what  sin  was  more 
powerfully  than  Paul."  In  the  sequel,  Arnold 
shows  how  Paul's  experience  of  the  spiritual 
influence  of  Jesus  enabled  the  Apostle  to  solve 
his  own  problem  of  sin  without  falling  into 
that  dangerous  brooding  which  Arnold  at- 
tributes to  the  typical  Puritan  spirit.  As  a 
result,  Arnold  identifies  his  own  view  of  sin 

218 


" 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

with  that  of  Paul  and  counsels  us  to  judge  the 
whole  matter  in  the  same  way. 

We  have  here  nothing  to  do  with  the  cor- 
rectness of  Matthew  Arnold's  criticism  of 
Protestantism;  and  also  nothing  to  say,  at 
the  present  moment,  about  the  adequacy 
of  Arnold's  interpretation,  either  of  Paul  or  of 
Jesus.  But  we  are  concerned  with  that 
characteristically  modern  view  of  the  prob- 
lem of  sin  which  Arnold  so  clearly  states  in 
the  words  just  quoted. 

What  constitutes  the  moral  burden  of  the 
individual  man,  —  what  holds  him  back  from 
salvation,  —  may  be  described  in  terms  of  his 
natural  heritage,  —  his  inborn  defect  of  charac- 
ter, —  or  in  terms  of  his  training, — or,  finally, 
in  terms  of  whatever  he  has  voluntarily  done 
which  has  been  knowingly  unrighteous.  In 
the  present  lecture  I  am  not  intending  to 
deal  with  man's  original  defects  of  moral 
nature,  nor  yet  with  the  faults  which  his 
training,  through  its  social  vicissitudes,  may 
have  bred  in  him.  I  am  to  consider  that 
which  we  call,  in  the  stricter  sense,  sin. 

219 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Whether   correctly   or   incorrectly,   a   man 
often  views  certain  of  his  deeds  as   in   some 
specially  intimate  sense  his   own,   and   may 
also    believe   that,   amongst    these    his   own 
deeds,   some  have   been   wilfully   counter  to 
what  he  believes  to  be  right.     Such  wrongful 
deeds  a  man  may  regard  as  his  own  sins. 
He  may  decline  to  plead  ignorance,  or  bad 
training,  or  uncontrollable  defect  of  temper, 
or   overwhelming  temptation,  as  the  ground 
and  excuse  for  just  these  deeds.     Before  the 
forum  of  his  own  conscience  he  may   say : 
"That  deed  was  the  result  of  my  own  moral 
choice,  and  was  my  sin."     For  the  time  being 
I  shall  not  presuppose,  for  the  purposes  of 
this  argument,  any  philosophical  theory  about 
free  will.     I  shall  not,  in  this  lecture,  assert 
that,  as  a  fact,  there  is  any  genuinely  free  will 
whatever.     At  the  moment,  I  shall  provision- 
ally accept  only  so  much  of  the  verdict  of  com- 
mon sense  as  any  man  accepts  when  he  says : 
'*That  was  my  own  voluntary  deed,  and  was 
knowingly  and  wilfully  sinful."     Hereupon  I 
shall    ask:     Is    Matthew    Arnold's    opinion 

220 


J. 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

correct  with  regard  to  the  way  in  which  the 
fact  and  the  sense  of  sin  ought  to  be  viewed  bv 
a  man  who  believes  that  he  has,  by  what  he 
calls  his  own  "free  act  and  deed,"  sinned  ?  Is 
Arnold's  opinion  sound  and  adequate  when 
he  says :  "Sin  is  not  a  monster  to  be  mused 
on,  but  an  impotence  to  be  got  rid  of." 
Arnold  praises  Paul  for  having  taken  sin  seri- 
ously enough  to  get  rid  of  it,  but  also  praises 
him  for  not  having  brooded  over  sin  except 
to  the  degree  that  was  "indispensable  to  the 
eflPort  to  get  rid  of  it."  Excessive  brooding 
over  sin  is,  in  Arnold's  opinion,  an  evil  charac- 
teristic of  Puritanism.     Is  Arnold  right  ? 

II 

Most  of  us  will  readily  agree  that  Arnold's 
words  have  a  ring  of  sound  modern  sense 
when  we  first  hear  them  spoken.  Brooding 
over  one's  sins  certainly  appears  to  be  not 
always,  —  yes,  not  frequently,  —  and  surely 
not  for  most  modern  men,  a  convenient 
spiritual  exercise.  It  tends  not  to  the  edifica- 
tion,  either  of  the  one  who  broods,  or  of  his 

221 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

brethren.  Brooding  sinners  are  neither  agree- 
able companions  nor  inspiring  guides.  Arnold 
is  quite  right  in  pointing  out  that  Paul's 
greatest  and  most  eloquent  passages  —  those 
amongst  his  words  which  we  best  remember  and 
love  —  are  full  of  the  sense  of  having  some- 
how "got  rid"  of  the  very  sin  to  which  Paul 
most  freely  confesses  when  he  speaks  of  his 
own  past  as  a  persecutor  of  the  Church  and  as 
an  unconverted  Pharisee.  It  is,  then,  the 
escape  from  sin,  and  not  the  bondage  to  sin, 
which  helps  a  man  to  help  his  fellows.  Ought 
not,  therefore,  the  thought  of  sin  to  be  used 
only  under  the  strict  and,  so  to  speak,  artistic 
restraints  to  which  Matthew  Arnold  advises 
us  to  keep  it  subject  ?  You  have  fallen  into 
a  fault ;  you  have  given  over  your  will  to  the 
enemy;  you  have  wronged  your  fellow;  or, 
as  you  believe,  you  have  offended  God  in  word 
and  deed.  What  are  you  now  to  do  about 
this  fact.^  "Get  rid  of  your  sin,"  says 
Matthew  Arnold.  Paul  did  so.  He  did  so 
through  what  he  called  a  loving  union  with 
the  spirit  of  Christ.     As  he  expressed  the  mat- 

222 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

ter,  he  "died"  to  sin.  He  "lived"  henceforth 
to  the  righteousness  of  his  Master  and  of  the 
Christian  community.  And  that  was,  for 
him,  the  end  of  brooding,  unless  you  call  it 
brooding  when  his  task  as  missionary  re- 
quired him  to  repeat  the  simple  confession  of 
his  earlier  life,  —  the  life  that  he  had  lived 
before  the  vision  of  the  risen  Christ  trans- 
formed him.  Matthew  Arnold  counsels  a 
repetition  of  Paul's  experience  in  modern 
fashion,  and  with  the  use  of  modern  ideas 
rather  than  of  whatever  was  narrow,  and  of 
whatever  is  now  superseded,  in  Paul's  reli- 
gious opinions  and  imagery. 

The  modern  version  of  Paulinism,  as  set 
forth  by  Arnold,  would  involve,  first,  a  return 
to  the  primitive  Christianity  of  the  sayings  of 
Jesus;  next,  a  "falling  in  love"  with  the 
person  and  character  of  Jesus ;  and,  finally, 
a  "getting  rid  of  sin"  through  a  new  life  of 
love,  lived  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  Matthew 
Arnold's  version  of  the  Gospel  is,  at  the  pres- 
ent moment,  more  familiar  to  general  readers 
of  the  literature  of  the  problem  of  Christianity 

223 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

than  it  was  when  he  wrote  his  essays  on  reli- 
gion. So  far  as  sin  is  concerned,  is  not  this 
version  heartily  acceptable  to  the  modern 
mind  ?  Is  it  not  sensible,  simple,  and  in 
spirit  strictly  normal,  as  well  as  moral  and 
religious  ?  Does  it  not  dispose,  once  for  all, 
both  of  the  religious  and  of  the  practical 
aspect  of  the  problem  of  sin  ? 

I  cannot  better  state  the  task  of  this  lecture 
than  by  taking  the  opportunity  which  Arnold's 
clearness  of  speech  gives  me  to  begin  the 
study  of  our  question  in  the  light  of  so  favorite 
a  modern  opinion. 

ni 

It  would  not  be  useful  for  us  to  consider  any 
further,  in  this  place,  Paul's  own  actual 
doctrine  about  such  sin  as  an  individual  thinks 
to  have  been  due  to  his  own  voluntary  and 
personal  deed.  Paul's  view  regarding  the  na- 
ture of  original  sin  involves  other  questions 
than  the  one  which  is  at  present  before  us. 
We  speak  here  not  of  original  sin,  but  of  know- 
ing and  voluntary  evil  doing.     Paul's  idea  of 

224 


TIME   AND    GUILT 


salvation    from    original    sin    through    grace, 
and  through  loving  union  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Master,  is  inseparable  from   his  special 
opinions  regarding  the  Church  as  the  body  of 
Christ,  and  regarding  the  supernatural  exist- 
ence of  the  risen  Christ  as  the  Spirit  of  the 
Church.     These   matters    also    are   not    now 
before  us.     The  same  may  be  said  of  Paul's 
views  concerning  the  forgiveness  of  our  volun- 
tary sins.     For,  in    Paul's   mind,   the   whole 
doctrine  of  the  sins  which  the  individual  has 
knowingly  and  wilfully  committed,  is  further 
complicated  by  the  Apostle's  teachings  about 
predestination.     And  for  an  inquiry  into  those 
teachings    there    is,   in    this    lecture,   neither 
space   nor  motive.     Manifold  and  impressive 
though  Paul's  dealings  with  the  problem  of  sin 
are,  we  shall  therefore  do  well,  upon  this  oc- 
casion, to  approach  the  doctrine  of  the  volun- 
tary sins  of  the  individual  from  another  side 
than  the  one  which  Paul  most  emphasizes. 
Let  us  turn  to  aspects  of  the  Christian  tradi- 
tion about  wilful  sin  for  which  Paul  is  not 
mainly  responsible. 

Q  225 


1 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 
We  all  know,  in  any  case,  that  Arnold's 
own  views  about  the  sense  and  the  thought  of 
sin  are  not  the  views  which  have  been  preva- 
lent in  the  past  history  of  Christianity.     And 
Arnold's  hostility  to  the  Puritan  spirit  carries 
him  too  far  when  he  seems  to  attribute  to 
Puritanism    the    principal    responsibility    for 
having  made  the  fact  and  the  sense  of  sin  so 
prominent  as  it  has  been  in  Christian  thought. 
Long  before  Puritanism,  mediaeval  Christian- 
ity had  its  own  meditations  concerning  sin. 
Others  than  Puritans  have  brooded  too  much 
over  their  sins.     And  not  all  Puritans  have 
cultivated  the  thought  of  sin  with  a  morbid 

intensity. 

I  have  no  space  for  a  history  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  wilful  sin.     But,  by  way  of  prepara- 
tion for  my  principal  argument,  I  shall  next 
call  to  mind  a  few  of  the  more  famiUar  Chris- 
tian beliefs  concerning  the  perils  and  the  results 
of  voluntary  sin,  without  caring,  at  the  mo- 
ment, whether  these  beliefs  are  mediaeval,  or 
Puritan,  or  not.     Thereafter,  I  shall  try  to 
translate  the  sense  of  these  traditional  beUefs 

226 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

into  terms  which  seem  to  me  to  be  worthy 
of  the  serious  consideration  of  the  modern 
man.  After  this  restatement  and  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Christian  doctrine,  —  not  of  orig- 
inal sin,  but  of  the  voluntary  sin  of  the  in- 
dividual, —  we  shall  have  new  means  of  seeing 
whether  Arnold  is  justified  in  declaring  that 
no  thought  about  sin  is  wise  except  such 
thought  as  is  indispensable  for  arousing  the 
eflFort  "  to  get  rid  of  sin." 


IV 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  concerning  wilful 
sin,  as  it  is  recorded  in  some  of  the  best  known 
of  his  sayings,  is  simple  and  searching,  august 
in  the  severity  of  the  tests  which  it  uses  for 
distinguishing  sinful  deeds  from  righteous 
deeds,  and  yet  radiant  with  its  familiar 
message  of  hope  for  the  sincerely  repentant 
sinner.  I  have  no  right  to  judge  as  to  the 
authenticity  of  the  individual  sayings  of  Jesus 
which  our  Gospels  record.  But  the  body  of 
the  teachings  of  the  Master  concerning  sin  is 
not  only  one  of  the  most  frequently  quoted 

227 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

portions  of  the  Gospel  tradition,  but  is  also 
an  essential  part  of  that  doctrine  of  Christian 
love  which  great  numbers  of  Christian  souls, 
both  learned  and  unlearned,  find  to  be  the 
most   obviously   characteristic   expression   of 
What  the  founder  had  at  heart  when  he  came 
to  seek   and   to   save  that  which   was  lost. 
Searching  is  this  teaching  about  sin,  because  of 
what  Matthew  Arnold  called  the  inwardness 
of  the  spirit  which  Jesus  everywhere  empha- 
sized in  telling  us  what  is  the  essence  of  right- 
eousness.    August    is   this    teaching   in    the 
severity  of  the  tests  which  it  appUes ;  because 
all  seeming,  all  worldly  repute,  all  outward 
conformity  to  rules,  avail  nothing  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Master,  unless  the  interior  life  of  the 
doer  of  good  works  is  such  as  fully  meets  the 
requirements  of  love,  both  towards  God  and 

towards  man. 

Countless  efforts  have  been  made  to  sum 
up  in  a  few  words  the  spirit  of  the  ethical 
teaching  of  Jesus.  I  make  no  new  effort,  I 
contribute  no  novel  word  or  insight,  when  I 
now  venture  to  say,  simply  in  passing,  that 

228 


TIME    AND    GUILT 


the    religion    of    the    founder,    as    preserved 
in  the  sayings,  is  a  religion  of  Whole-Heart ed- 
ness.     The  voluntary  good  deed  ib  one  which, 
whatever    its    outward    expression    may    be, 
carries  with  it  the  whole  heart  of  love,  both  to 
God  and  to  the  neighbor.     The  special  act  — 
whether  it  be  giving  the  cup  of  cold  water,  or 
whether  it  be  the  martyr's  heroism  in  confes- 
sing the   name   of  Jesus   in  presence  of  the 
persecutor  —  matters   less   than    the    inward 
spirit.     The  Master  gives  no  elaborate  code 
to  be  applied  to  each  new  situation.     The 
whole  heart  devoted  to  the  cause  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven,  —  this  is  what  is  needed. 

On  the  other  hand,  whatever  wilful  deed 
does  not  spring  from  love  of  God  and  man, 
and  especially  whatever  deed  breaks  with  the 
instinctive  dictates  of  whole-hearted  love,  is 
sig^  And  sin  means  ahenation  from  the  King- 
dom and  from  the  Father ;  and  hence,  in  the 
end,  means  destruction.  Here  again  the  au- 
gust severity  of  the  teaching  is  fully  mani- 
fested. But  from  this  destruction  there  is 
indeed  an  escape.     It  is  the  escape  by  the 

229 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

road  of  repentance.     That  is  the  only  road 
whicli  is  emphatically  and  repeatedly  insisted 
upon  in  the  sayings  of  Jesus,  as  we  have  then^. 
But  this  repentance  must  include  a  whole- 
hearted willingness  to  forgive  those  who  tres- 
pass against  us.     Thus  repentance  means  a 
return  both  to  the  Father  and  to  the  whole- 
hearted life  of  love.     Another  name  for  this 
whole-heartedness,   in   action   as   well   as    in 
repentance,  is  faith.     For  the  true  lover  of 
God  instinctively  believes  the  word  of  the  Son 
of  Man  who  teaches  these  things,  and  is  sure 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  will  come. 

But  like  the  rest  of  the  reported  sayings  of 
Jesus,  this  simple  and  august  doctrine  of  the 
peril  of  sin,  and  of  the  way  of  escape  through 
repentance,  comes  to  us  with  many  indications 
that  some  further  and  fuller  revelation  of  its 
meaning  is  yet  to  follow.     Jesus  appears  in 
the  Gospel  reports  as  himself  formally  an- 
nouncing to  individuals  that  their  sins  are 
forgiven.     The  escape  from  sin  is   therefore 
not  always  wholly  due  to  the  repentant  sinner's 
own  initiative.     Assistance  is  needed.     And 

230 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

Jesus  appears  in  the  records,  as  assisting. 
He  assists,  not  only  as  the  teacher  who  an- 
Jiounces  the  Kingdom,  but  as  the  one  who  has 
"power  to  forgive  sins."  Here  again  I  simply 
follow  the  well-known  records.  I  am  no 
judge  as  to  what  sayings  are  authentic. 

I  am  sure,  however,  that  it  was  but  an  in- 
evitable development  of  the  original  teaching 
of  the  founder  and  of  these  early  reports  about 
his  authority  to  forgive,  when  the  Christian 
community  later  conceived  that  salvation 
from  personal  and  voluntary  sin  had  become 
possible  through  the  work  which  the  departed 
Lord  had  done  while  on  earth.  How  Christ 
saved  from  sin  became  hereupon  a  problem. 
But  that  he  saved  from  sin,  and  that  he  some- 
how did  so  through  what  he  won  for  men  by 
his  death,  became  a  central  constituent  of  the 
later  Christian  tradition. 

A  corollary  of  this  central  teaching  was  a 
further  opinion  which  tradition  also  empha- 
sized, and,  for  centuries,  emphasized  the  more, 
the  further  the  apostohc  age  receded  into  the 
past.     This  further  opinion  was:    That  the 

231 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

wilful  sinner  is  powerless  to  return  to  a  whole- 
hearted union  with  God  through  any  deed  of 
his  own.  He  could  not  *'get  rid  of  sin," 
either  by  means  of  repentance  or  otherwise, 
unless  the  work  of  Christ  had  prepared  the 
way.  This,  in  sum,  was  long  the  common 
tradition  of  the  Christian  world.  How  the 
saving  work  of  Christ  became  or  could  be 
made  efficacious  for  obtaining  the  forgiveness 
of  the  wilful  sin  of  an  individual,  —  this 
question,  as  we  well  know,  received  momen- 
tous and  conflicting  answers  as  the  Christian 
church  grew,  differentiated,  and  went  through 
its  various  experiences  of  heresy,  of  schism, 
and  of  the  learned  interpretation  of  its  faith. 
Here,  again,  the  details  of  the  history  of  dog- 
ma, and  the  practice  of  the  Church  and  of  its 
sects  in  dealing  with  the  forgiveness  of  sins, 
concern  us  not  at  all. 

We  need,  however,  to  remind  ourselves, 
at  this  point,  of  one  further  aspect  of  the 
tradition  about  wilful  sin.  That  sin,  if 
unforgiven,  leads  to  "death,"  was  a  thought 
which  Judaism  had  inherited  from  the  reh- 

232 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

gion  of  the  prophets  of  Israel.  It  was  a  grave 
thought,  essential  to  the  ethical  development 
of  the  faith  of  Israel,  and  capable  of  vast 
development  in  the  light  both  of  experience 
and  of  imagination. 

Because  of  the  later  growth  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  future  life,  the  word  "death"  came  to 
mean,  for  the  Christian  mind,  what  it  could  not 
yet  have  meant  for  the  early  prophets  of  Israel. 
And,  in  consequence.  Christian  tradition 
gradually  developed  a  teaching  that  the  di- 
vinely ordained  penalty  of  unforgiven  sin — the 
doom  of  the  wilful  sinner — is  a  "  second  death," 
an  essentially  endless  penalty.  The  Apoca- 
lypse imaginatively  pictures  this  doom. 
When  the  Church  came  to  define  its  faith  as 
to  the  future  life,  it  developed  a  well-known 
group  of  opinions  concerning  this  endless 
penalty  of  sin.  In  its  outlines  this  group  of 
opinions  is  famiUar  even  to  all  children  who 
have  learned  anything  of  the  faith  of  the 
fathers. 

An  essentially  analogous  group  of  opinions 
is  found   in   various   religions   that   are  not 

233 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Christian.     In   its  origin  this  group  of  opin- 
ions  goes   back   to    the    very    beginnings    of 
those  forms  of  ethical  religion  whose  history 
is   at   all   closely   parallel   to   the   history   of 
Judaism    or    of    Christianity.     The    motives 
which  are  here  in  question  lie  deeply  rooted  in 
human  nature;    but  I  have  no  right  and  no 
time  to  attempt  to  analyze  them  now.     It  is 
enough  for  my  purpose  to  remind  you  that 
the  idea  of  the  endless  penalty  of  unforgiven 
sin  is  by  no  means  peculiar   to   Puritanism; 
and  that  it  is  certainly  an  idea  which,  for  those 
who  accept  it   with  any  hearty  faith,   very 
easily    leads    to    many    thoughts    about    sin 
which    tend    to    exceed    the    strictly    artistic 
measure   which   Matthew  Arnold   assigns  as 
the   only   fitting   one  for  all   such   thoughts. 
To  think  of  a  supposed  '* endless  penalty" 
as  a  certain  doom  for  all  unforgiven  sin,  may 
not  lead  to  morbid  brooding.     For  the  man 
who  begins  such  thoughts  may  be  sedately 
sure  that  he  is  no  sinner.     Or  again,  although 
he  confesses  himself  a  sinner,  he  may  be  pleas- 
antly convinced  that  forgiveness   is    readily 

234 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

and  surely  attainable,  at  least  for  himself. 
And,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  there  are  still  other 
reasons  why  no  morbid  thought  need  be  con- 
nected with  the  idea  of  endless  penalty.  But 
no  doubt  such  a  doctrine  of  endless  penalty 
tends  to  awaken  thoughts  which  have  a  less 
modern  seeming,  and  which  involve  a  less  ! 
sure  confidence  in  one's  personal  power  to 
"get  rid  of  sin"  than  Matthew  Arnold's  words, 
as  we  have  cited  them,  convey.  If,  without 
any  attempt  to  dwell  further,  either  upon  the 
history  or  the  complications  of  the  traditional 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  wilful  sin  of  the 
individual,  we  reduce  that  doctrine  to  its 
simplest  terms,  it  consists  of  two  theses,  both 
of  which  have  had  a  vast  and  tragic  influence 
upon  the  fortunes  of  Christian  civilization. 
The  theses  are  these:  First:  **By  no  deed 
of  his  own,  unaided  by  the  supernatural 
consequences  of  the  work  of  Christ,  can 
the  wilful  sinner  win  forgiveness. "  Second  : 
**The  penalty  of  unforgiven  sin  is  the  endless 
second  death." 


235 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


TIME    AND    GUILT 


The  contrast  between  these  two  traditional 
theses  and  the  modern  spirit  seems  manifest 
enough,  even  if  we  do  not  make  use  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  definition  of  the  reasonable 
attitude  towards  sin.  This  contrast  of  the  old 
faith  and  the  modern  view  is  one  of  the  most 
frequently  emphasized  means  of  challenging 
the  ethical  significance  of  the  Christian  tradi- 
tion. 

It  is  indeed  difficult  to  define  just  who  the 
'* modern  man"  is,  and  what  views  he  has  to 
hold  in  order  to  be  modern.  But  very  many 
people,  I  suppose,  would  be  disposed  to  accept 
as  a  partial  definition  of  the  modern  man, 
this  formulation:  "The  modern  man  is  one 
who  does  not  believe  in  hell,  and  who  is  too 
busy  to  think  about  his  own  sins."  If  this 
definition  is  indeed  too  trivial  to  be  just,  it 
would  still  seem  to  many  serious  people  that, 
at  this  point,  if  at  no  other,  the  modern 
man  has  parted  company  with  Christian 
tradition. 

236 


And  the  parting  would  appear  to  be  not 
accidental,  nor  yet  due  to  superficial  motives. 
The  deepest  ethical  interests  would  be  at 
stake,  if  the  appearances  here  represent  the 
facts  as  they  are.  For  the  old  faith  held  that 
the  very  essence  of  its  revelation  concerning 
righteousness  was  bound  up  with  its  concep- 
tion of  the  consequences  of  unforgiven  sin. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  education  of  the  hu- 
man race  has  taught  us  any  coherent  lesson, 
it  has  taught  us  to  respect  the  right  of  a  ra- 
tional being  to  be  judged  by  moral  standards 
that  he  himself  can  see  to  be  reasonable. 

Hence  the  moral  dignity  of  the  modern  idea 
of  man  seems  to  depend  upon  declining  to 
regard  as  just  and  righteous  any  penalty  which 
is  supposed  to  be  inflicted  by  the  merely  arbi- 
trary will  of  any  supernatural  power.  The  just 
penalty  of  sin,  to  the  modern  mind,  must 
therefore  be  the  penalty,  whatever  it  is, 
which  the  enlightened  sinner,  if  fully  awake 
to  the  nature  of  his  deed,  and  rational  in  his 
estimate  of  his  deed,  would  voluntarily  inflict 
upon  himself.     And  how  can  one  better  ex- 

237 


/ 


wa^MftA&iafeJVKwfa'-  rft>JL'.'i.^A..g^^ 


M^ 


j^s^sim^^'-i'^s.i^sSrU 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

press  that  penalty  than  by  following  the  spirit 
of  Matthew  Arnold's  advice:  "Get  rid  of 
your  sin"?  This  advice,  to  be  sure,  has  its 
own  deliberate  sternness.  For  **the  firm  ef- 
fort to  get  rid  of  sin"  may  involve  long  labor 
and  deep  grief.  But  "endless  penalty,"  a 
"second  death,"  —  what  ethically  tolerable 
meaning  can  a  modern  mind  attach  to  these 

words  ? 

Is  not,  then,  the  chasm  between  the  modern 
ethical  view  and  the  ancient  faith  at  this 
point  simply  impassable  ?  Have  the  two  not 
parted  company  altogether,  both  in  letter  and, 
still  more,  in  their  inmost  spirit  ? 

To  this  question  some  representatives  of 
modern  liberal  Christianity  would  at  once 
reply  that,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the 
early  Gospel  tradition  does  not  attribute  to 
Jesus  himself  the  more  hopeless  aspects  of  the 
doctrine  of  sin,  as  the  later  tradition  was  led 
to  define  them.  Jesus,  according  to  the  re- 
ports of  his  teaching  in  the  Gospels,  does  in- 
deed more  than  once  use  a  doctrine  of  the 
endless  penalty  of   unforgiven   sin,  —  a   doc- 

238 


TIME   AND    GUILT 


trine  with  which  a  portion  of  the  Judaism  of 
his  day  was  more  or  less  familiar.  In  well- 
known  parables  he  speaks  of  the  torments  of 
another  world.  And  in  general  he  deals  with 
wilful  sin  unsparingly.  But,  so  far  as  the 
present  life  is  concerned,  he  seems  to  leave 
the  door  of  repentance  always  open.  The 
Father  waits  for  the  Prodigal  Son's  return. 
And  the  Prodigal  Son  returns  of  his  own  will. 
We  hear  nothing  in  the  parables  about  his 
being  unable  effectively  to  repent  unless 
some  supernatural  plan  of  salvation  has  first 
been  worked  out  for  him.  Is  it  not  possible, 
then,  to  reconcile  the  Christian  spirit  and  the 
modern  man  by  simply  returning  to  the 
Christianity  of  the  parables  ?  So,  in  our 
day,  many  assert. 

I  do  not  believe  that  the  parables,  in  the 
form  in  which  we  possess  them,  present  to  us 
any  complete  view^  of  the  essence  of  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  sin,  or  of  the  sinner's  way  of 
escape.  I  do  not  believe  that  they  were  in- 
tended by  the  Master  to  do  so.  I  have  al- 
ready pointed  out   how   our   reports   of   the 

239 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


founder's  teachings  about  sin  indicate  that 
these  teachings  were  intended  to  receive  a 
further  interpretation  and  supplement.     Our 
real   problem   is   whether   the   interpretation 
and  supplement  which  later  Christian  tradi- 
tion gave,  through  its  doctrine  of  sin,  and  of 
the  endless  penalty  of  sin,  was,  despite  its 
tragedy,  its  mythical  setting,  and  its  arbitra- 
riness, a  teaching  whose  ethical  spirit  we  can 
still  accept  or,  at  least,  understand.     Is  the 
later  teaching,  in  any  sense,  a  just  develop- 
ment of  the  underlying  meaning  of  the  par- 
ables ?     Does    any    deeper    idea    inform    the 
traditional  doctrine  that  the  wilful  sinner  is 
powerless  to  save  himself   from   a   just  and 
endless  penalty  through  any  repentance,  or 
through  any  new  deed  of  his  own  ? 

As  I  undertake  to  answer  these  questions, 
let  me  ask  you  to  bear  in  mind  one  general 
historical  consideration.  Christianity,  even 
in  its  most  imaginative  and  in  its  most  tragic 
teachings,  has  always  been  under  the  influ- 
ence of  very  profound  ethical  motives,  —  the 
motives  which  already  inspired  the  prophets 

240 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

of  Israel.  The  founder's  doctrine  of  the 
Kingdom,  as  we  now  possess  that  doctrine, 
was  an  outline  of  an  ethical  religion.  It  was 
also  a  prologue  to  a  religion  that  was  yet  to 
be  more  fully  revealed,  or  at  least  explained. 
This,  as  I  suppose,  was  the  founder's  personal 
intention.  When  the  early  Church  sought  to 
express  its  own  spirit,  it  was  never  knowingly 
false;  it  was  often  most  fluently,  yet  faithfully, 
true  to  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  founder. 
Its  expressions  were  borrowed  from  many 
sources.  Its  imagination  was  constructive  of 
many  novelties.  Only  its  deeper  spirit  was 
marvellously  steadfast.  Even  when,  in  its 
darker  moods,  its  imagination  dwelt  upon 
the  problem  of  sin,  it  saw  far  more  than  it 
was  able  to  express  in  acceptable  formulas. 
Its  imagery  was  often  of  local,  or  of  heathen, 
or  even  of  primitive  origin.  But  the  truth 
which  the  imagery  rendered  edifying  and 
teachable,  —  this  often  bears  and  invites  an 
interpretation  whose  message  is  neither  local 
nor  primitive.  Such  an  interpretation  I 
believe   to  be   possible   in   case  of  the  doc- 

B  241 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


trine  of  sin  and  of  its  penalty ;  and  to 
my  own  interpretation  I  must  now  ask  your 
attention. 

VI 

There  is  one  not  infrequent  thought  about 
sin  upon  which  Matthew  Arnold's  rule  would 
surely  permit  us  to  dwell ;  for  it  is  a  thought 
which  helps  us,  if  not  wholly  "to  get  rid  of 
sin,"  still,  in  advance  of  decisive  action,  to 
forestall  some  temptations  to  sin  which  we 
might  otherwise  find  too  insistent  for  our 
safety.  It  is  the  thought  which  many  a  man 
expresses  when  he  says,  of  some  imagined  act : 
*'If  I  were  to  do  that,  I  should  be  false  to  all 
that  I  hold  most  dear ;  I  should  throw  away 
my  honor ;  I  should  violate  the  fidelity  that  is 
to  me  the  very  essence  of  my  moral  interest  in 
my  existence."  The  thought  thus  expressed 
may  be  sometimes  merely  conventional ;  but 
it  may  also  be   very  earnest  and  heartfelt. 

Every  man  who  has  a  moral  code  which  he 
accepts,  not  merely  as  the  customary  and, 
to  him,   opaque  or  senseless   yerdict  of  his 

242 


-.'.'■,.  ^,s,A,4l 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

tribe  or  of  his  caste,  but  as  his  own  chosen 
personal  ideal  of  life,  has  his  power  to  formu- 
late what  for  him  would  seem  (to  borrow  the 
religious  phraseology)  his  "sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  —  his  own  morally  "impos- 
sible" choice,  so  far  as  he  can  now  predeter- 
mine what  he  really  means  to  do. 

Different  men,  no  doubt,  have  different  ex- 
emplary sins  in  mind  when  they  use  such  words. 
Their  various  codes  may  be  expressions  of  quite 
different  and  largely  accidental  social  tradi- 
tions;    their   diverse  examples   of   what,   for 
each  of  them,  would  be  his  own  instance  of 
the  unpardonable   sin,  may  be   the   outcome 
of   the   tabus   of   whatever   social   order   you 
please.     I  care  for  the  moment  not  at  all  for 
the  objective  ethical  correctness  of  any  one 
man's  definition  of  his  own  moral  code.     And 
I  am  certainly  here  formulating  no  ethical 
code  of  my  own.  jl  am  simply  pointing  out 
that,  when  a  man  becomes  conscious  of  his 
own  rule  of  life,  of  his  own  ideal  of  what 
makes  his  voluntary  life  worth  while,  he  tends 
to  arrange  his  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  acts 

243 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

SO  that,  for  him  at  least,  some  acts,  when  he 
contemplates  the  bare  possibility  of  doing 
them  himself,  appear  to  him  to  be  acts  such 
that  they  would  involve  for  him  a  kind 
of  moral  suicide,  —  a  deliberate  wrecking  of 
what   makes   life,  for  himself,  morally  worth 

while. 

One  common-sense  way  of  expressing  such 
an  individual  judgment  upon  these  extreme 
acts  of  wrong-doing,  is  to  say :  "If  I  were  to 
do  that  of  my  own  free  will,  I  could  thereafter 
never  forgive  myself." 

Since  I  am  here  not  undertaking  any 
critical  discussion  of  the  idea  of  the  "Ought," 
I  do  not  now  venture  the  thesis  that  every 
man  who  is  a  reasonable  being  at  all,  or  who, 
as  they  say,  "has  a  conscience,"  must  needs 
be  able  to  name  instances  of  acts  which,  if 
he  knowingly  chose  to  do  them,  would  make 
his  life,  in  his  own  eyes,  a  moral  chaos,  —  a 
failure, —  so  that  he  would  "never  forgive" 
himself  for  those  acts.  If  a  student  of  ethics 
asks  me  to  prove  that  a  man  ought  to  view  his 
own  life  and  his  own  will  in  this  way,  I  am 

244 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

not  here  concerned  to  offer  such  a  proof  in 
philosophical   terms. 

But  this   I  can  point  out :  In  case  a  man 
thinks  of  his  own  possible  actions  in  this  way, 
he  need  not  be  morbidly  brooding  over  sins 
of  which  it  is  well  not   to   think   too   much. 
He  may  be  simply  surveying  his  plan  of  life 
in  a  resolute  way,  and  deciding,  as  well  as  he 
can,  where  he  stands ;  what  his  leading  ideas 
are,  and  what  makes  his  voluntary  life,  from 
his  own  point  of  view,  worth  living.     To  be 
resolute,  is  at  all  events  no  weakness ;   and  no- 
body "perishes"  merely  because  he  has  his 
mind  clearly  made   up   regarding   what,   for 
him,    would   be   his   own   unpardonable    sin. 
There  is  no  loss  for  one's  manhood  in  know- 
ing how  one's  "sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost," 
one's   possible  act  for  which  one  is  resolved 
never  to  ask  one's  own  forgiveness,  is  defined. 
Such  thoughts  tend  to  clear  our  moral  air,  if 
only  we  think  them  in  terms  of  our  own  per- 
sonal ideals,  and  do  not,  as  is  too  often  the 
case,  apply  them  solely  to  render  more  dra- 
matic our  judgments  about  our  neighbors. 

245 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

VII 

In    order   to    be    able    to    formulate    such 
thoughts,  one  must  have  an  "ideal,"  even  if 
one    cannot    state    it    in    an    abstract    form. 
One  must  think  of  one's  voluntary  life  in  terms 
of  fidelity  to  some  such   "ideal,"  or  set  of 
ideals.     One  must  regard  one's  self  as  a  crea- 
ture  with   a   purpose   in   living.     One   must 
have  what  they   call   a   "mission"   in  one's 
own  world.     And  so,  whether  one  uses  philo- 
sophical theories  or  religious  beliefs,  or  does 
not  use  them,  one  must,  when  one  speaks 
thus,   actually   have   some   sort   of    spiritual 
realm  in  which,  as  one  believes,  one's  moral 
life  is  lived,  a  realm  to  whose  total  order,  as 
one  supposes,  one  could  be  false  if  one  chose. 
One's   mission,   one's   business,   must   ideally 
extend,  in  some  fashion,  to  the  very  boun- 
daries of  this  spiritual  realm,  so  that,  if  one 
actually  chose  to  commit  one's  supposed  un- 
pardonable sin,  one  could  exist  in  this  entire 
realm  only  as,  in  some  sense  and  degree,  an 
outcast,  —  estranged,  so  far  as  that  one  un- 

246 


iiiiaMaiflBgMtMiffiiiiiiftiiir'-^-"'^"-^-""'''^-i^^^^^ 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

pardonable  fault  estranged  one,   from  one's 
own  chosen  moral  hearth  and  fireside.     At 
least  this  is  how  one  resolves,  in  advance  of 
decisive  action,  to  view  the  matter,  incase 
one  has  the  precious  privilege  of  being  able 
to  make  such  resolves.     And  I  say  that  so  to 
find  one's  self  resolving,  is  to  find  not  weakness 
and  brooding,  but  resoluteness  and  clearness. 
Life   seems   simply   blurred   and   dim   if  one 
can  nowhere  find  in  it  such  sharp  moral  out- 
lines.    And  if  one  becomes  conscious  of  such 
sharp  outhnes,  one  is  not  saying:    "Behold 
me,  the  infallible  judge  of  moral  values  for 
all  mankind.     Behold  me  with  the  absolute 
moral  code  precisely  worked  out."     For  one 
is  so  far  making  no  laws  for  one's  neighbors. 
One  is  accepting  no  merely  traditional  tabus. 
One  is  simply  making  up  one's  mind  so  as  to 
give  a  more  coherent  sense  to  one's  choices. 
The  penalty  of  not  being  able  to  make  such 
resolves  regarding  what  would  be  one's  own 
unpardonable   sin,  is  simply   the  penalty   of 
flabbiness  and  irresoluteness.     To  remain  un- 
aware of  what  we  propose  to  do,  never  helps 

247 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

US  to  live.  To  be  aware  of  our  coherent  plan, 
to  have  a  moral  world  and  a  business  that,  in 
ideal,  extends  to  the  very  boundaries  of  this 
world,  and  to  view  one's  life,  or  any  part  of  it, 
as  an  expression  of  one's  own  personal  will, 
is  to  assert  one's  genuine  freedom,  and  is  not 
to  accept  any  external  bondage.  But  it  is 
also  to  bind  one's  self,  in  all  the  clearness  of 
a  calm  resolve.  It  is  to  view  certain  at  least 
abstractly  possible  deeds  as  moral  catas- 
trophes, as  creators  of  chaos,  as  deeds  whereby 
the  self,  ij  it  chose  them,  would,  at  least  in 
so  far,  banish  itself  from  its  own  country. 

To  be  able  to  view  life  in  this  way,  to  resolve 
thus  deliberately  what  genuine  and  thorough- 
going sin  would  mean  for  one's  own  vision, 
requires  a  certain  maturity.  Not  all  ordinary 
misdeeds  are  in  question  when  one  thinks  of 
the  unpardonable  sin.  Blunders  of  all  sorts 
fill  one's  childhood  and  youth.  What  Paul 
conceived  as  our  original  sin  may  have 
expressed  itself  for  years  in  deeds  that  our 
social  order  condemns,  and  that  our  later 
life   deeply   deplores.     And   yet,    in   all   this 

248 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

maze  of  past  evil-doing  and  of  folly,  we  may 
have  been,  so  far,  either  helpless  victims  of 
our  nature  and  of  our  training,  or  blind  fol- 
lowers of  false  gods.     What  Paul   calls  sin 
may    have    "abounded."     And    yet,    as    we 
look  back,  we  may  now  judge  that  all  this 
was    merely    a    means    whereby,    henceforth, 
''grace  may  more  abound."     We  may  have 
learned  to  say,  —  it  may  be  wise,  and  even 
our  actual  duty  to  say:    "I  will  not  brood 
over  these  which  were  either  my  ignorant  or 
my   helpless   sins.     I   will   henceforth   firmly 
and   simply   resolve    'to   get   rid    of    them.' 
That  is  for  me  the  best.     Bygones  are  by- 
gones.    Remorse  is  a  waste  of  time.     These 
'confusions    of    a    wasted   youth'    must   be 
henceforth  simply  ignored.     That  is  the  way 
of  cheer.     It  is  also  the  way  of  true  right- 
eousness.    I   can    Hve    wisely    only    in    case 
I  forget  my  former  folHes,  except  in  so  far  as 
a  memory   of   these  follies  helps  me   not  to 
repeat  them." 

One  may  only  the  more  insist  upon  this 
cheering   doctrine   of  Lethe   and   forgiveness 

249 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

for  the  past,  and  of  "grace  abounding"  for 
the  future,  when  there  come  into  one's  Hfe 
those  happenings  which  Paul  viewed  as  a 
new  birth,  and  as  a  ''dying  to  sin."  These 
workings  of  "grace,"  if  they  occur  to  us,  may 
transform  our  "old  man"  of  inherited  defect, 
of  social  waywardness,  of  contentiousness, 
and  of  narrow  hatred  for  our  neighbors  and 
for  "the  law"  into  the  "new  life."  It  is  a 
new  life  to  us  because  we  now  seem  to  have 
found  our  own  cause,  and  have  learned  to  love 
our  sense  of  intimate  companionship  with  the 
universe.  Now,  for  the  first  time,  we  have 
found  a  hfe  that  seems  to  us  to  have  trans- 
parent sense,  unity  of  aim,  and  an  abiding  and 
sustaining  inspiration  about  it. 

If  this  result  has  taken  place,  then,  whatever 
our  cause,  or  our  moral  opinions,  or  our  reU- 
gion  may  be,  we  shall  tend  to  rejoice  with 
Paul  that  we  have  now  "died"  to  the  old  life 
of  ignorance  and  of  evil-working  distractions. 
Hereupon  we  may  be  ready  to  say,  with  him, 
and  joyously:  "There  is  no  condemnation" 
for  us  who  are  ready  to  walk  after  what  we 

250 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

now  take  to  be  "the  spirit."  The  past  is 
dead.  Grace  has  saved  us.  Forgiveness 
covers  the  evil  deeds  that  were  done.  For 
those  deeds,  as  we  now  see,  were  not  done  by 
our  awakened  selves.  They  were  not  our 
own  "free  acts"  at  all.  They  were  the  work- 
ings of  what  Paul  called  "the  flesh." 
"Grace"  has  blotted  them  out. 

I  am  still  speaking  not  of  any  one  faith 
about  the  grace  that  saves,  or  about  the  ideal 
of  life.  Let  a  man  find  his  salvation  as  it 
may  happen  to  him  to  find  it.  But  the  main 
point  that  I  have  further  to  insist  upon  is 
this  :  Whenever  and  however  we  have  become 
morally  mature  enough  to  get  life  all  colored 
through  and  through  by  what  seems  to  us  a 
genuinely  illuminating  moral  faith,  so  that 
it  seems  to  us  as  if,  in  every  deed,  we  could 
serve,  despite  our  weakness,  our  one  highest 
cause,  and  be  faithful  to  all  our  moral  world 
at  every  moment,  —  then  this  inspiration 
has  to  be  paid  for.  The  abundance  of 
grace  means,  henceforth,  a  new^  gravity  of 
life. 

251 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

For  we  now  have  to  face  the  further  fact  that, 
if  we  have  thus  won  vast  ideals,  and  a  will 
that  is  now  inspired  to  serve  them,  we  can 
imagine  ourselves  becoming  false  to  this  our 
own  will,  to  this  which  gives  our  life  its  gen- 
uine value.     We  can  imagine  ourselves  break- 
ing faith  with  our  own  world-wide  cause  and 
inspiration.     One  who  has  found  his  cause, 
if  he  has  a  will  of  his  own,  can  become  a 
conscious   and   deliberate   traitor.     One   who 
has  found  his  loyalty  is  indeed,  at  first,  under 
the  obsession  of  the  new  spirit  of  grace.     But 
if,  henceforth,  he  Hves  with  a  will  of  his  own, 
he  can,  by  a  wilful  closing  of  his  eyes  to  the 
Hght,  become  disloyal. 

Our  actual  voluntary  life  does  not  bear  out 
any  theory  as  to  the  fatally  predestined  per- 
severance of  the  saints.  For  our  voluntary 
life  seems  to  us  as  if  it  was  free  either  to  per- 
severe or  not  to  persevere.  The  more  precious 
the  hght  that  has  seemed  to  come  to  me,  the 
deeper  is  the  disgrace  to  which,  in  my  own 
eyes,  I  can  condemn  myself,  if  I  voluntarily 
become   false   to   this  light. 

252 


j'Siflllssisillif 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

Now  it  is  indeed  not  well  to  brood  over 
such  chances  of  falsity.  But  it  is  manly 
to  face  the  fact  that  they  are  present. 

I  repeat  that,  in  all  this  statement,  I  have 
presupposed  no  philosophical  theory  of  free 
will,  and  have  not  assumed  the  truth  of  any 
one  ethical  code  or  doctrine.  I  have  been 
speaking  simply  in  terms  of  moral  experience, 
and  have  been  pointing  out  how  the  world 
seems  to  a  man  who  reaches  suflScient  (moral 
maturity  to  possess,  even  if  but  for  a  season, 
a  pervasive  and  practically  coherent  ideal  of 
life,  and  to  value  himseli  as  a  possible  servant 
of  his  cause,  but  a  servant  whose  freedom  to 
choose  is  still  his  own. 

What  I  point  out  is  that,  if  a  man  has  won 
practically  a  free  and  conscious  view  of  what 
his  honor  requires  of  him,  the  reverse  side  of 
this  view  is  also  present.  This  reverse  side 
takes  the  form  of  knowing  what,  for  this  man 
himself,  it  would  mean  to  be  wilfully  false  to 
his  honor.  One  who  knows  that  he  freely 
serves  his  cause  knows  that  he  could,  if  he 
chose,  become  a  traitor.      And  if  indeed  he 

253 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

freely  serves  his  cause,  he  knows  whether  or 
no  he  could  forgive  himself  if  he  wilfully  be- 
came a  traitor.  Whoever,  through  grace,  has 
found  the  beloved  of  his  life,  and  now  freely 
hves  the  Hfe  of  love,  knows  that  he  could,  if 
he  chose,  betray  his  beloved.  And  he  knows 
what  estimate  his  own  free  choice  now  re- 
quires him  to  put  upon  such  betrayal. 

Choose  your  cause,  your  beloved,  and  your 
moral  ideal  as  you  please.  What  I  now  point 
out  is  that  so  to  choose  is  to  imply  your 
power  to  define  what,  for  you,  would  be  the 
unpardonable  sin  if  you  committed  it.  This 
unpardonable  sin  would  be  betrayal. 

VIII 

So  far  I  have  spoken  of  the  moral  possi- 
bility of  treason.  We  seem  to  be  free.  There- 
fore it  seems  to  us  as  if  treason  were  possible. 
But  now,  do  any  of  us  ever  actually  thus 
betray  our  own  chosen  cause  ?  Do  we  ever 
actually  turn  traitor  to  our  own  flag,  —  to  the 
flag  that  we  have  sworn  to  serve,  —  after 
taking  our  oath,  not  as  unto  men,  but  as  unto 

254 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

ourselves  and  our  cause  ?  Do  any  of  us  ever 
really  commit  that  which,  in  our  own  eyes,  is 
the  unpardonable  sin  ? 

Here,  again,  let  every  one  of  us  judge  for 
himself.  And  let  him  also  judge  rather  him- 
self than  his  neighbor.  For  we  are  here 
speaking,  not  of  customary  codes,  nor  of  out- 
ward seeming,  but  of  how  a  man  who  knows 
his  ideal  and  knows  his  own  will  finds  that 
his   inward   deed   appears   to   himself. 

Still,  apart  from  all  evil  speaking,  the  com- 
mon experience  of  mankind  seems  to  show  that 
such  actual  and  deliberate  sin  against  the 
light,  such  conscious  and  wilful  treason, 
occasionally  takes  place. 

So  far  as  we  know  of  such  treason  at  all, 
or  reasonably  beheve  in  its  existence,  it 
appears  to  us  to  be,  on  the  whole,  the  worst 
evil  with  which  man  afflicts  his  fellows  and 
his  social  order  in  this  distracted  world  of 
human  doings.  The  blindness  and  the  naive 
cruelty  of  crude  passion,  the  strife  and  hatred 
with  which  the  natural  social  order  is  filled, 
often    seem  to  us   mild   when   we  compare 

255 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

them  with  the  spiritual  harm  that  follows 
the  intentional  betrayal  of  great  causes  once 
fully  accepted,  but  then  wilfully  forsaken,  by 
those  to  whom  they  have  been  intrusted. 

"If  the  light  that  is  in  thee  be  darkness, 
how  great  is  that  darkness."  This  is  the  word 
which  seems  especially  fitted  for  the  traitor's 
own  case.  For  he  has  seen  the  great  light.  The 
realm  of  the  spirit  has  been  graciously  opened 
to  him.  He  has  willingly  entered.  He  has 
chosen  to  serve.  And  then  he  has  closed  his 
eyes ;  and,  by  his  own  free  choice,  a  darkness 
far  worse  than  that  of  man's  primal  savagery 
has  come  upon  him.  And  the  social  world, 
the  unity  of  brotherhood,  the  beloved  life 
which  he  has  betrayed,  —  how  desolate  he 
has  left  what  was  fairest  in  it.  He  has  re- 
duced to  its  primal  chaos  the  fair  order  of 
those  who  trusted  and  who  lived  and  loved 
together  in  one  spirit ! 

But  we  are  here  little  concerned  with  what 
others  think  of  the  traitor,  if  such  traitor  there 
be.  We  are  interested  in  what  (if  the  Ught 
against  which  he  has  sinned  returns  to  him), 

256 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

the  traitor  henceforth  is  to  think  of  himself. 
Matthew  Arnold  would  say,  **Let  him  think 
of  his  sin,"  —  that  is,  in  this  case,  of  his  trea- 
son, —  only  in  so  far  as  is  indispensable  to 
the  "firm  resolve  to  get  rid  of  it."  We  ask 
whether,  —  now  that  the  traitor  has  first  won 
his  own  hght,  and  has  defined  by  his  own  will 
his  own  unpardonable  sin,  and  has  then 
betrayed  his  cause,  has  sinned  against  his  light 
and  has  done  his  little  best  to  make  chaos  of 
his  own  chosen  ideal  and  of  his  moral  order, 
—  we  ask,  I  say,  whether  Arnold's  rule  seems 
any  longer  quite  adequate  to  meet  the  situa- 
tion. 

Of  course  I  am  not  venturing  to  assign 
to  the  supposed  traitor  any  penalties  except 
those  which  his  own  will  really  intends  to 
assign  to  him.  I  am  not  acting  in  the  least 
as  his  Providence.  I  am  leaving  him  quite 
free  to  decide  his  own  fate.  I  am  certainly 
not  counselling  him  to  feel  any  particular 
kind  or  degree  of  the  mere  emotion  called 
remorse.  For  all  that  I  now  shall  say,  he 
is  quite  free,  if  that  is  his  desire,  to  forget  his 
■  257 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

treason  once  for  all,  and  to  begin  his  business 
afresh  with  a  new  moral  ideal,  or  with  no 
ideal  at  all,  as  he  may  choose. 

What  I  ask,  however,  is  simply  this :  // 
he  resumes  his  former  position  of  knowing  and 
choosing  an  ideal,  if  he  also  remembers  what 
ideal  he  formerly  chose,  and  what  and  how 
^/Lni''"^L^nd  ho\v/deliberately  he  betrayed,  and  knows 
himself  for  what  he  is,  what  does  he  judge 
regarding  the  now  inevitable  and  endless  con- 
sequences of  his  deed  ?  And  what  answer 
will  he  now  make  to  Matthew  Arnold's  kind 
advice:  —  **Get  rid  of  your  sin."  He  need 
not  answer  in  a  brooding  way.  He  need  be 
no  Puritan.  He  may  remain  as  cheerful  in 
his  passing  feelings  as  you  please.  He  may 
quite  calmly  rehearse  the  facts.  He  may 
decline  to  shed  any  tear,  either  of  repentance 
or  of  terror.  My  only  hypothesis  is  that  he 
sees  the  facts  as  they  are,  and  confesses,  how- 
ever coolly  and  dispassionately,  the  moral 
value  which,  as  a  matter  of  simple  coherence 
of  view  and  opinion,  he  now  assigns  to  himself. 


258 


TIME    AND   GUILT 


IX 


He  will  answer  Matthew  Arnold's  advice, 
as  I  think,  thus:  "'Get  rid  of  my  sin.?^' 
How  can  I  get  rid  of  it  ?  It  is  done.  It  is 
past.  It  is  as  irrevocable  as  the  Archaean 
geological  period,  or  as  the  collision  of  stellar 
masses,  the  light  of  whose  result  we  saw 
here  on  earth  a  few  years  ago,  when  a  new 
star  flamed  forth  in  the  Constellation  Per- 
seus. I  am  the  one  who,  at  such  a  time,  with 
such  a  hght  of  the  spirit  shining  before 
me,  with  my  eyes  thus  and  thus  open  to  my 
business  and  to  my  moral  universe,  first,  so 
far  as  I  could  freely  act  at  all,  freely  closed 
my  eyes,  and  then  committed  what  my  own 
will  had  already  defined  to  be  my  unpardon- 
able sin.  So  far  as  in  me  lay,  in  all  my 
weakness,  but  yet  with  all  the  wit  and  the 
strength  that  just  then  were  mine,  I  was  a 
traitor. 

That  fact,  that  event,  that  deed,  is  irrevo- 
cable. The  fact  that  I  am  the  one  who  then 
did  thus  and    so,  not  ignorantly,  but  know- 

259 


*  '•'lie  '''jVl.  ,>  .  ■  1.  *,j;^  is. 


|nit(g|iftSiiBiii»WJ)»Bffi«'ggM''< 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


ingly,  —  that  fact  will  outlast  the  ages.    That 
fact  is  as  endless  as  time. 

And,  in  so  far  as  I  continue  to  value  myself 
as  a  being  whose  life  is  coherent  in  its  mean- 
ing, this  fact  that  then  and  there  I  was  a 
traitor  will  always  constitute  a  genuine  pen- 
alty, —  my  own  penalty,  —  a  penalty  that  no 
god  assigns  to  me,  but  that  I,  simply  because 
I  am  myself,  and  take  an  interest  in  knowing 
myself,  assign  to  myself,  precisely  in  so  far  as 
and  whenever  I  am  awake  to  the  meaning  of 
my  own  hfe.  I  can  never  undo  that  deed.  If 
I  ever  say,  'I  have  undone  that  deed,'  I  shall  be 
both  a  fool  and  a  liar.  Counsel  me,  if  you  will, 
to  forget  that  deed.  Counsel  me  to  do  good 
deeds  without  number  to  set  over  against 
that  treason.  Counsel  me  to  be  cheerful, 
and  to  despise  Puritanism.  Counsel  me  to 
plunge  into  Lethe.  x\ll  such  counsel  may  be, 
in  its  way  and  time,  good.  Only  do  not 
counsel  me  *to  get  rid  of  just  that  sin. 
That,  so  far  as  the  real  facts  are  concerned, 
cannot  be  done.  For  I  am,  and  to  the  end 
of  endless  time  shall  remain,  the  doer  of  that 

260 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

wilfully  traitorous  deed.  Whatever  other 
value  I  may  get,  that  value  I  retain  forever. 
My  guilt  is  as  enduring  as  time." 

But  hereupon  a  bystander  will  naturally 
invite  our  supposed  traitor  to  repent,  and  to 
repent  thoroughly  of  his  treason.  The  trai- 
tor, now  cool  and  reasonable  once  more,  can 
only  apply  to  his  own  case  Fitzgerald's  word 
in  the  Omar  Khayyam  stanzas :  — 

The  moving  finger  writes,  and  having  writ. 
Moves  on  :  nor  all  your  piety  nor  wit 
Can  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  line. 
Nor  all  your  tears  wash  out  a  word  of  it. 

These  very  famihar  lines  were  sometime 
viewed  as  Oriental  fatahsm.  But  they  are, 
in  fact,  fully  apphcable  to  the  freest  of  deeds 
when  once  that  deed  is  done. 

We  need  not  further  pursue  any  supposed 
colloquy  between  the  traitor  and  those  who 
comment  upon  the  situation.  The  simple 
fact  is  that  each  deed  is  ipso  facto  irrevocable ; 
that  our  hypothetical  traitor,  in  his  own 
deed,  has  been  false  to  whatever  Hght  he  then 
and  there  had  and  to  whatever  ideal  he  then 

261 


^f 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

viewed  as  his  highest  good.  Hereupon  no 
new  deed,  however  good  or  however  faithful, 
and  however  much  of  worthy  consequences 
it  introduces  into  the  future  hfe  of  the  traitor 
or  of  his  world,  can  annul  the  fact  that  the 
one  traitorous  deed  was  actually  done.  No 
question  as  to  whether  the  traitor,  when  he 
first  chose  the  cause  which  he  later  betrayed, 
was  then  ethically  correct  in  his  choice,  aids 
us  to  estimate  just  the  one  matter  which  is 
here  in  question,  —  namely,  the  value  of  the 
traitor  as  the  doer  of  that  one  traitorous 
deed.  For  his  treason  consists  not  in  his 
blunders  in  the  choice  of  his  cause,  but  in  his 
sinning  against  such  light  as  he  then  and 
there  had.  The  question  is,  furthermore, 
not  one  as  to  his  general  moral  character, 
apart  from  this  one  act  of  treason.  To 
condemn  at  one  stroke  the  whole  man  for  the 
one  deed  is,  of  course,  absurd.  But  it  is  the 
one  deed  which  is  now  in  question.  This 
man  mav  aho  be  the  doer  of  countless  good 
deeds.  But  our  present  question  is  solely 
as  to  his  value  as  the  doer  of  that  one  trai- 

262 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

torous  deed.  This  value  he  has  through  his 
own  irrevocable  choice.  Whatever  other 
values  his  other  deeds  may  give  him,  this  one 
value  remains,  never  to  be  removed.  By  no 
deed  of  his  own  can  he  ever  escape  from  that 
penalty  which  consists  in  his  having  intro- 
duced into  the  moral  world  the  one  evil  which 
was,  at  the  time,  as  great  an  evil  as  he  could 
then,  of  his  own  will,  introduce. 

In  brief,  by  his  own  deed  of  treason,  the 
traitor  has  consigned  himself,  —  not  indeed 
his  ivhole  self,  but  his  self  as  the  doer  of  this 
deed,  —  to  what  one  may  call  the  hell  of  the 
irrevocable.  All  deeds  are  indeed  irrevocable. 
But  only  the  traitorous  sin  against  the  light 
is  such  that,  in  advance,  the  traitor's  own  free 
acceptance  of  a  cause  has  stamped  it  with  the 
character  of  being  what  his  own  will  had 
defined  as  his  own  unpardonable  sin.  What- 
ever else  the  traitor  may  hereafter  do, — 
and  even  if  he  becomes  and  remains,  through 
all  his  future  Hfe,  in  this  or  anv  other  world, 
a  saint,  —  the  fact  will  remain :  There  was  a 
moment  when  he  freely  did  whatever  he  could 

263 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


to  wreck  the  cause  that  he  had  sworn  to  serve. 
The  traitor  can  henceforth  do  nothing  that 
will  give  to  himself,  precisely  in  so  far  as  he 
was  the  doer  of  that  one  deed,  any  character 
which  is  essentially  different  from  the  one 
determined  by  his  treason. 

The  hell  of  the  irrevocable:  all  of  us  know 
what  it  is  to  come  to  the  border  of  it  when 
we  contemplate  our  own  past  mistakes  or 
mischances.  But  we  can  enter  it  and  dwell 
in  it  only  when  the  fact  **This  deed  is  irrev- 
ocable," is  combined  with  the  further  fact 
"This  deed  is  one  that,  unless  I  call  treason 
my  good,  and  moral  suicide  my  life,  I  cannot 
forgive  myself  for  having  done." 

Now  to  use  these  expressions  is  not  to  con- 
demn the  traitor,  or  any  one  else,  to  endless 
emotional  horrors  of  remorse,  or  to  any  sen- 
suous pangs  of  penalty  or  grief,  or  to  any  one 
set  of  emotions  whatever.  It  is  simply  to 
say :  If  I  morally  value  myself  at  all,  it 
remains  for  me  a  genuine  and  irrevocable  evil 
in  my  world,  that  ever  I  was,  even  if  for  that 
one  moment  only  and  in  that  one  deed,  with 

264 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

all  my  mind  and  my  soul  and  my  heart 
and  my  strength,  a  traitor.  And  if  I  ever 
had  any  cause,  and  then  betrayed  it,  —  such 
an  evil  not  only  was  my  deed,  but  such  an 
evil  forever  remains,  so  far  as  that  one  deed 
was  done,  the  only  value  that  I  can  attribute 
to  myself  precisely  as  the  doer  of  that  deed 
at  that  time. 

What  the  pungency  of  the  odors,  what  the 
remorseful  griefs,  of  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable 
may  be,  for  a  given  individual,  we  need  not 
attempt  to  determine,  and  I  have  not  the 
least  right  or  desire  to  imagine.  Certainly 
remorse  is  a  poor  companion  for  an  active 
life ;  and  I  do  not  counsel  any  one,  traitor  or 
not  traitor,  to  cultivate  remorse.  Our  ques- 
tion is  not  one  about  one's  feelings,  but  about 
one's  genuine  value  as  a  moral  agent.  Cer- 
tainly forgetfulness  is  often  useful  when  one 
looks  forward  to  new  deeds.  I  do  not  counsel 
any  one  uselessly  to  dwell  upon  the  past. 
Still  the  fact  remains,  that  the  more  I  come 
to  take  large  and  coherent  views  of  my  life 
and  of  its  meaning,  the  more  will  the  fact 

265 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

that,  by  my  own  traitorous  deed,  I  have  ban- 
ished myself  to  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable, 
appear  to  me  both  a  vast  and  a  grave  fact 
in  my  world.  I  shall  learn,  if  I  wisely  grow 
into  new  life,  neither  to  be  crushed  by  any 
sort  of  facing  of  that  fact,  nor  to  brood  unduly 
over  its  everlasting  presence  as  a  fact  in  my 
life.  But  so  long  as  I  remain  awake  to  the 
real  values  of  my  life,  and  to  the  coherence  of 
my  meaning,  I  shall  know  that  while  no  god 
shuts  me,  or  could  possibly  shut  me,  if  he 
would,  into  this  hell,  it  is  my  own  will  to  say 
that,  for  this  treason,  just  in  so  far  as  I  wil- 
fully and  knowingly  committed  this  treason, 
I  shall  permit  none  of  the  gods  to  forgive  me. 
For  it  is  my  precious  privilege  to  assert  my 
own  reasonable  will,  by  freely  accepting  my 
place  in  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable,  and  by 
never  forgiving  myself  for  this  sin  against  the 
light.  If  any  new  deed  can  assign  to  just 
that  one  traitorous  deed  of  mine  any  essen- 
tially novel  and  reconciling  meaning,  —  that 
new  deed  will  in  any  case  certainly  not  be  mine. 
I  can  do  good  deeds  in  future ;   but  I  cannot 

266 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

revoke  my  individual  past  deed.  If  it  ever 
comes  to  appear  as  anything  but  what  I 
myself  then  and  there  made  it,  that  change  will 
be  due  to  no  deed  of  mine.  Nothing  that  I 
myself  can  do  will  ever  really  reconcile  me  to 
my  own  deed,  so  far  as  it  was  that  treason. 

This,  then,  as  I  suppose,  is  the  essential 
meaning  which  underlies  the  traditional 
doctrine  of  the  endless  penalty  of  wilful  sin. 
This  deeper  meaning  is  that,  quite  apart  from 
the  judgment  of  any  of  the  gods,  and  wholly 
in  accordance  with  the  true  rational  will  of 
the  one  who  has  done  the  deed  of  betrayal, 
the  guilt  of  a  free  act  of  betrayal  is  as  endur- 
ing as  time.  This  doctrine  so  interpreted  is, 
I  insist,  not  cheerless.  It  is  simply  resolute. 
It  is  the  word  of  one  who  is  ready  to  say  to 
himself,  '*Such  was  my  deed,  and  I  did  it." 
No  repentance,  no  pardoning  power  can  de- 
prive us  of  the  duty  and,  —  as  I  repeat,  — 
the  precious  privilege  of  saying  that  of  our 
own   deed. 


267 


VI 

ATONEMENT 


I 


LECTURE  VI 


ATONEMENT 

rriHE  human  aspect  of  the  Christian  idea 
-■-  of  atonement  is  based  upon  such  motives 
that,  if  there  were  no  Christianity  and  no 
Christians  in  the  world,  the  idea  of  atonement 
would  have  to  be  invented,  before  the  higher 
levels  of  our  moral  existence  could  be  fairly 
understood.  To  the  illustration  of  this  thesis 
the  present  lecture  is  to  be  largely  devoted. 
The  thesis  is  not  new ;  yet  it  seems  to  me  to 
have  been  insuflBciently  emphasized  even  in 
recent  literature ;  although,  as  is  well  known, 
modern  expositors  of  the  meaning  of  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  atonement  have  laid  a  con- 
stantly increasing  stress  upon  the  illustra- 
tions and  analogies  of  that  doctrine  which 
they  have  found  present  in  the  common  experi- 
ence of  mankind,  in  non-theological  litera- 
ture, and  in  the  history  of  ethics. 


iM 


^^P 


271 


THE   PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 


The  treatment  of  the  idea  of  atonement  in 
the  present  lecture,  if  it  in  any  respect  aids 
towards  an  understanding  of  our  problem, 
will  depend  for  whatever  it  accomplishes  upon 
two  deliberate  limitations. 

The  first  limitation  is  the  one  that  I  have 
just  indicated.  I  shall  emphasize,  more  than 
is  customary,  aspects  of  the  idea  of  atonement 
which  one  could  expound  just  as  readily  in  a 
world  where  the  higher  levels  of  moral  experi- 
ence had  somehow  been  reached  by  the 
leaders  of  mankind,  but  where  Christians 
and  Christianity  were  as  yet  wholly  unknown. 

My  second  limitation  will  be  this :  I  shall 
consider  the  idea  of  atonement  in  the  light 
of  the  special  problems  which  the  close 
of  the  lecture  on  "Time  and  Guilt"  left  upon 
our  hands.  The  result  will  be  a  view  of  the 
idea  of  atonement  which  will  be  intentionally 
fragmentary,  and  which  will  need  to  be  later 
reviewed  in  its  connection  with  the  other 
great  Christian  ideas. 

272 


^^^s^^^tjji^i^ii^iagsmgkims^ssk 


ATONEMENT 

It  is  true  that  the  history  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the   atonement  has   inseparably 
linked,  with  the  topics  that  I  shall  here  most 
emphasize,  various  religious  beliefs,  and  theo- 
logical   interpretations,    with    which,    under 
my  chosen  limitations  and  despite  these  limi- 
tations,  I  shall  endeavor  to  keep  in  touch. 
But,  in  a  great  part  of  what  I  shall  have  to 
say,  I  shall  confine  myself  to  what  I  may  call 
"the  problem  of  the  traitor,"  —  an  ethical 
problem  which,  on  the  basis  laid  in  the  fore- 
going  lecture,   I   now   choose   arbitrarily   as 
my  typical  instance  of  the  human  need  for 
atonement,  and  of  a  sense  in  which,  in  purely 
human  terms,  we  are  able  to  define  what  an 
atoning  act  would  be,  if  it  took  place,  and 
what  it  could  accomplish,  as  well  as  what  it 
could  not  accomplish. 

Our  last  lecture  familiarized  us  with  the 
conception  of  the  being  whom  I  shall  now 
call,  throughout  this  discussion,  "the  traitor." 
We  shall  soon  learn  new  reasons  why  our 
present  study  will  gain,  in  definiteness  of  issue 
and  in  simplicity,   by   using  the  exemplary 

T  273 


THE   PROBLEM    OF   CHRISTIANITY 

moral  situation  in  which  our  so-called  "trai- 
tor" has  placed  himself,  as  our  means  for 
bringing  to  light  what  relief,  what  possible, 
although  always  imperfect,  reconciliation  of 
the  traitor  with  his  own  moral  world,  and  with 
himself,  this  situation  permits. 

Perhaps  I  can  help  you  to  anticipate  my 
further  statement  of  my  reasons  for  dwelling 
upon  the  unlovely  situation  of  the  hypothet- 
ical traitor,  if  I  tell  you  what  association  of 
ideas  first  conducted  me  to  the  choice  of  the 
exemplary  type  of  moral  tragedy  which  I  shall 
use  as  the  vehicle  whereby  we  are  here  to  be 
carried  nearer  to  our  proposed  view  of  the 
idea  of  atonement. 

In  Bach's  Matthew  Passion  Music,  whose 
libretto  was  prepared  under  the  master's 
own  guidance,  there  is  a  great  passage  wherein, 
at  the  last  supper,  Christ  has  just  said: 
" One  of  you  shall  betray  me."  "And  they  all 
begin  to  say,"  so  the  recitative  first  tells  us, 
although  at  once  passing  the  words  over  into 
the  mouths  of  the  chorus,  "Is  it  I  ?  Is  it  I  ? 
Is  it  I  ?  "     And  then  there  begins  (with  the  use 

274 


ATONEMENT 

of  the  recurrent  chorale),  the  chorus  of  "the 
Believers" :  "'Tis  I,  My  sins  betray  thee,  who 
died  to  make  me  whole."  The  effect  of  this,  as 
well   as  of  other  great  scenes  in  the  Passion 
Music,  —  the  dramatic  and  musical  workings 
in  their  unity,  as  Bach  devised  them,  transport 
the  listener  to  a  realm  where  he  no  longer  hears 
an  old  story  of  the  past  retold,    but,  looking 
down,  as  it  were,  upon  the  whole  stream  of 
time,  sees  the  betrayal,  the  divine  tragedy, 
and  the  triumph,  in  one,  —  not  indeed  time- 
less, but  time-embracing  vision.     In  this  vision 
all  flows  and  changes  and  passes  from  the 
sorrows  of  a  whole  world  to  the  hope  of  recon- 
ciliation.    Yet  all  this  fluent  and  passionate 
life  is  one  divine  life,  and  is  also  the  listener's, 
or,  as  we  can  also  say,  the  spectator's  own 
life.     Judas,  the  spectator  knows  as  himself, 
as  his  own  ruined  personality;  the  sorrow  of 
Gethsemane,    the    elemental    and    perfectly 
human  passion  of  the  chorus  :  "  Destroy  them, 
destroy  them,  the  murderous  brood,"  — the 
waiting  and   weeping  at   the  tomb,  —  these 
things  belong  to  the  present  life  of  the  be- 

275 


THE   PROBLEMOF    CHRISTIANITY 

Hever  who  witnesses  the  passion.  They  are 
all  the  experiences  of  us  men,  just  as  we  are. 
They  are  also  divine  revelations,  coming  as  if 
from  a  world  that  is  somehow  inclusive  of  our 
despair,  and  that  yet  knows  a  joy  which,  as 
Bach  depicts  it  in  his  music  drama,  is  not  so 
much  mystical,  as  simply  classic  in  the  per- 
fection of  its  serene  self-control. 

What  the  art  of  Bach  suggests,  I  have 
neither  the  right  nor  the  power  to  translate 
into  "matter-moulded  forms  of  speech."  I 
have  here  to  tell  you  only  a  little  about  the 
being  whom  Mephistopheles  calls  "der  kleine 
Gott  der  Welt,"  about  the  one  who,  as  the 
demon  says :  — 

Bleibt  stets  von  gleichem  Schlag, 

Und  ist  so  wunderlich,  als  wie  am  ersten  Tag. 

And  I  am  forced  to  limit  myself  in  this  dis- 
course to  choosing,  ^—  as  my  exemplary  being 
who  feels  the  need  of  some  form  of  atonement, 
—  man  in  his  most  unlovely  and  drearily 
discouraging  aspect,  —  man  in  his  appearance 
as  a  betrayer.  The  justification  of  this 
repellent  choice  can  appear,  if  at  all,  then  only 

276 


\ 


ATONEMENT 

in  the  outcome  of  our  argument,  and  in  its 
later  relation  to  the  whole  Christian  doctrine 
of  life.  But  you  may  now  see  what  first 
suggested  my  using  this  choice  in  this  lecture. 

So  much,  however,  it  is  fair  to  add  as  I 
introduce  my  case.  The  "traitor"  of  my 
discourse  shall  here  be  the  creature  of  an 
ideal  definition  based  upon  facts  set  forth  in 
the  last  lecture.  I  shall  soon  have  to  speak 
again  of  the  sense  in  which  all  observers  of 
human  affairs  have  a  right  to  say  that  there 
are  traitors,  and  that  we  well  know  some  of 
their  works.  But  we  have  in  general  no  right 
to  say  with  assurance,  when  we  speak  of  our 
individual  neighbors,  that  we  know  who  the 
traitors  are.  For  we  are  no  searchers  of 
hearts.  And  treason,  as  I  here  define  it,  is 
an  aflFair  of  the  heart,  —  that  is,  of  the  inner 
voluntary  deed  and  decision. 

While  my  ideal  definition  of  the  traitor  of 
whom  we  are  now  to  speak  thus  depends,  as 
you  see,  upon  facts  already  discussed  in  our 
discourse  on  "Time  and  Guilt,"  our  new 
relation  to  the  being  defined  as  a  traitor  con- 

277 


I 


THE   PROBLEM     OF  CHRISTIANITY 

sists  in  the  fact  that,  at  the  last  time,  we 
considered  the  nature  of  his  guilt,  while  now 
we  mean  to  approach  an  understanding  of  his 
relation  to  the  idea  of  atonement. 

II 

Two  conditions,  as  you  will  remember  from 
our  last  lecture,  determine  what  constitutes, 
for  the  purposes  of  my  definition,  a  traitor. 
The  first  condition  is  that  a  traitor  is  a  man 
who  has  had  an  ideal,  and  who  has  loved  it 
with  all  his  heart  and  his  soul  and  his  mind  and 
his  strength.     His  ideal  must  have  seemed 
to  him  to  furnish  the  cause  of  his  life.     It 
must  have  meant  to  him  what  Paul  meant 
by    the    grace   that    saves.     He    must   have 
embraced  it,  for  the  time,  with  full  loyalty. 
It  must  have  been  his  religion,  his   way  of 
salvation.     It  must  have  been  the  cause  of  a 
Beloved  Community. 

The  second  condition  that  my  ideal  traitor 
must  satisfy  is  this.  Having  thus  found  his 
cause,  he  must,  as  he  now  knows,  in  at  least 
some  one  voluntary  act  of  his  life,  have  been 

278 


ATONEMENT 

deliberately  false  to  his  cause.  So  far  as  in 
him  lay,  he  must,  at  least  in  that  one  act, 
have  betrayed  his  cause. 

Such  is  our  ideal  traitor.  At  the  close  of  the 
last  lecture  we  left  him  condemned,  in  his 
own  sight,  to  what  we  called  the  "hell  of  the 
irrevocable." 

We  now,  for  the  moment,  still  confine  our- 
selves to  his  case,  and  ask:  Can  the  idea 
of  atonement  mean  anything  that  permits  its 
application,  in  any  sense,  however  limited, 
to  the  situation  of  this  traitor?  Can  there 
be  any  reconciliation,  however  imperfect, 
between  this  traitor  and  his  own  moral  world, 
—  any  reconciliation  which,  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  and  for  his  own  consciousness, 
can  make  his  situation  in  his  moral  world 
essentially  different  from  the  situation  in 
which  his  own  deed  has  so  far  left  him  ? 

In  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable  there  may  be, 
as  at  the  last  time  we  pointed  out,  no  sensuous 
penalties  to  fear.  And  there  may  be,  for 
all  that  we  know,  countless  future  opportu- 
nities  for  the  traitor  to  do  good   and   loyal 

279 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

deeds.     Our   problem   lies   in   the   fact   that 
none  of  these  deeds  will  ever  undo  the  sup- 
posed deed  of  treason.     In  that  sense,  then, 
no   good    deeds   of   the   traitor's  future  will 
ever  so  atone  for  his  one  act  of  treason,  that 
he  will  become  clear  of  just  that  treason,  and 
of  what  he  finds  to  be  its  guilt.     He  had  his 
moral  universe;    and  his  one  act  of  treason 
did  the  most  that  he  then  and  there  could  do 
to  destroy  that  world  and  to  wreck  his  own 
relation  to  its  meaning.     His  irrevocable  deed 
is   for  his  moral  consciousness,  its  own  end- 
less  penalty.     For  that  deed   he   can   never 
forgive  himself,  so  long  as  he  knows  himself. 
And  nothing  that  we  can  now  say  will  change 
just  these  aspects  of  the  matter.     So  much  in 
the  traitor's  situation  is  irrevocably  fixed. 

But  it  is  still  open  to  us  to  ask  whether 
anything  could  occur  in  the  traitor's  moral 
world  which,  without  undoing  his  deed,  could 
still  add  some  new  aspect  to  this  deed,  —  an 
aspect  such  that,  when  the  traitor  came  to 
view  his  own  deed  in  this  light,  he  could  say : 
"Something  in  the  nature  of  a  genuinely  recon- 

280 


ATONEMENT 

ciling  element  has  been  added,  not  only  to 
my  world  and  to  my  own  life,  but  also  to  the 
inmost  meaning  even  of  my  deed  of  treason 
itself.  My  moral  situation  has  hereby  been 
rendered  genuinely  better  than  my  deed 
left  it.  And  this  bettering  does  not  consist 
merely  in  the  fact  that  some  new  deed  of  my 
own,  or  of  some  one  else,  has  been  simply  a 
good  deed,  instead  of  a  bad  one,  and  has  thus 
put  a  good  thing  into  my  world  to  be  hence- 
forth considered  side  by  side  with  the  irrev- 
ocable evil  deed.  No,  this  bettering  consists 
in  something  more  than  this,  —  in  something 
which  gives  to  my  very  treason  itself  a  new 
value ;  so  that  I  can  say,  not :  '  It  is  undone ;  * 
but  *I  am  henceforth  in  some  measure,  in 
some  genuine  fashion,  morally  reconciled  to 
the  fact  that  I  did  this  evil. ' " 

Plainly,  if  any  such  reconciliation  is  pos- 
sible, it  will  be  at  best  but  an  imperfect  and 
tragic  reconciliation.  It  cannot  be  simply 
and  perfectly  destructive  of  guilt.  But  the 
great  tragic  poets  have  long  since  taught  us 
that   there  are   indeed   tragic  reconciliations 

281 


THE    PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 

even  when  there  are  great  woes.  These 
tragic  reconcihations  may  be  infinitely 
pathetic;  but  they  may  be  also  infinitely 
elevating,  and  even,  in  some  unearthly  and 
wondrous  way,  triumphant. 

Our  question  is :    Can  such  a  tragic  recon- 
ciliation  occur   in   the   case   of   the   traitor? 
If  it  can  occur,  the  result  would  furnish  to  us 
an  instance  of   an   atonement.     This   atone- 
ment would  not  mean,  and  could  not  mean, 
a  clearing  away  of  the  traitor's  guilt  as  if  it 
never  had  been  guilt.     It  would  still  remain 
true   that   the  traitor  could  never  rationally 
forgive  himself  for  his  deed.     But  he  might  in 
some  measure,   and   in  some  genuine  sense, 
become,  not  simply,  but  tragically,  —  sternly, 
—  yet  really,  reconciled,  not  only  to  himself, 
but  to  his  deed  of  treason,  and  to  its  meaning 
in  his  moral  world. 

Let  us  consider,  then,  in  what  way,  and  to 
what  degree,  the  traitor  might  find  such  an 
atonement. 


^ 


ATONEMENT 


III 


282 


The  Christian  idea  of  atonement  has  al- 
ways involved  an  affirmative  answer  to  the 
question  :    Is  an  atonement  for  even  a  wilful 
deed  of  betrayal  possible.^     Is  a  reconcilia- 
tion of  even  the  traitor  to  himself  and  to  his 
world    a    possibility.?     The    help    that    our 
argument  gets  from  employing  the  supposed 
traitor's  view  of  his  own  case  as  the  guide  of 
our    search    for    whatever    reconciliation    is 
still   possible   for   him,    shows   itself,    at   the 
present  point  of  our  inquiry,  by  simplifying 
the  issue,  and  by  thus  enabling  us  at  once  to 
dispose,    very    briefly  —  not    indeed    of    the 
Christian  idea  of  atonement  (for  that,  as  we 
shall  see,  will  later  reveal  itself  in  a  new  and 
compelling  form),  but  of  a  great  number  of 
well-known  theological  theories  of  the  nature 
of  atonement,  so  far  as  they  are  to  help  our 
traitor  to  get  a  view  of  his  own  case. 

These  theological  theories  stand  at  a  pecul- 
iar disadvantage  when  they  speak  to  the  now 
fully   awakened   traitor,   when  he  asks  what 

283 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

measure  of  reconciliation  is  still  for  him 
possible.  Our  traitor  has  his  own  narrow,  but 
for  that  very  reason,  clearly  outlined  problem 
of  atonement  to  consider.  We  here  confine 
ourselves  to  his  view. 

Calmly  reasonable  in  his  hell  of  the  irrevo- 
cable,  he   is   dealing,   not  with  the   "angry 
God"  of  a  well-known  theological  tradition, 
but   with   himself.     He  asks,  not  indeed  for 
escape  from  the  irrevocable,   but  for   what 
relative   and   imperfect  tragic    reconciliation 
with  his  world  and  with  his  past,  his  moral 
order  can  still  furnish  to  him,  by   any  new 
event    or    deed    or    report.     Shall    we    offer 
him  one  of  the  traditional  theological  com- 
forts   and    say:     "Some    one, -namely,    a 
divine  being,  -  Christ  himself,   has   accom- 
plished a  full   'penal   satisfaction'   for  your 
deed  of  treason.     Accept  that  satisfying  sac- 
rifice of  Christ,  and  you  shall  be  reconciled." 
The  traitor  need  not  pause  to  repeat  any  of 
the  now  so  well-known  theological  and  ethical 
objections  to  the  "penal  satisfaction"  theories 
of  atonement.     He  needs  no  long  dispute  to 

284 


<( 


<( 


\ 


ATONEMENT 

clear  his  head.  The  cold  wintry  light  of  his 
own  insight  into  what  was  formerly  his  moral 
home  and  into  what  he  has  by  his  own  deed 
lost,  is  enough  to  show  him  the  mercilessly 
unchangeable  outlines  of  his  moral  landscape. 
He  sees  them;  and  that  is  so  far  enough. 
Penal  satisfaction.?^"  "That;'  he  will  say, 
may  somehow  interest  the  'angry  God  '  of 
one  or  another  theologian.  If  so,  let  this 
angry  God  be  content,  if  he  chooses.  That 
does  not  reconcile  me.  So  far  as  penalty  is 
concerned :  — 

*  I  was  my  own  destroyer  and  will  be  my  own  hereafter.* 
I  asked  for  reconciliation  with  my  own  moral 
universe,  not  for  the  accidental  pacification 
of  some  angry  God.  The  'penal  satisfac- 
tion' offered  by  another  is  simply  foreign  to 
all  the  interests  in  the  name  of  which  I 
inquire." 

But  hereupon  let  a  grander,  —  let  a  far 
more  genuinely  religious  and  indeed  truly 
Christian  chord  be  sounded  for  the  traitor's 
consolation.  Let  the  words  of  Paul  be  heard: 
*' There  is  now  no  condemnation  for  them  that 

285 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

are  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  walk  not  after  the 
flesh,    but    after    the    spirit."     The    simply 
human  meaning  of  those  immortal  words,  if 
understood    quite    apart    from    Paul's    own 
religious    beliefs,    is    far  deeper  than  is  any 
merely  technical  theological  theory  of  atone- 
ment.    And  our  traitor  will  well  know  what 
those    words    of   Paul  mean.     Their  deepest 
human  meaning  has  long  since  entered  into 
his  life.     Had   it   not   so   entered,   he  would 
be  no  traitor ;  for  he  would  never  have  known 
that  there  is  what,  for  his  own  estimate,  has 
been  a  Holy  Spirit,  —  a  cause  to  which  to 
devote    one's    life,  —  a    love   that    is    indeed 
redeeming,  and,  when  it   first   comes   to  us, 
compeUing,  —  the    love    that    raises,    as    if 
from  the  dead,   the  man  who  becomes  the 
lover, —  the  love  that  also  forces  the  lover, 
with  its  mysterious  power,  to  die  to  his  old 
natural    life    of   barren    contentions,    and    of 
distractions,  and  to  live  in  the  spirit.     That 
love,  — so   the  traitor  well   knows,   redeems 
the  lover  from  all  the  helpless  natural  wretch- 
edness of  the,  as  yet,  unawakened  life.     It 

286 


ATONEMENT 

frees  from  "condemnation"  all  who  remain 
true  to  this  love. 

The  traitor  knows  all  this  by  experience. 
And  he  knows  it  not  in  terms  of  mere  theo- 
logical formulas.  He  knows  it  as  a  genuinely 
human  experience.  He  knows  it  as  what 
every  man  knows  to  whom  a  transforming 
love  has  revealed  the  sense  of  a  new  life. 

All  this  is  familiar  to  the  traitor.  In  his 
own  way,  he  has  heard  the  voice  of  the  Spirit. 
He  has  been  converted  to  newness  of  life. 
And  therefore  he  has  known  what  his  own  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost  meant.  And,  there- 
after, he  has  deliberately  committed  that 
very  sin.  Therefore  Paul's  words  are  at 
once,  to  his  mind,  true  in  their  most  human  as 
well  as  in  their  most  spiritual  sense.  And 
just  for  that  very  reason  they  are  to  him 
now,  in  his  guilt,  as  comfortless  and  as 
unreconciling  as  a  death  knell.  For  they 
tell  him  of  precisely  that  life  which  once  was 
his,  and  which,  so  far  as  his  one  traitorous 
deed  could  lead  to  such  a  result,  he  himself 
has  deliberately  slain. 

287 


ri 


A 


linirtatitiMiuMMiMfaai 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

If  there  is  to  be  any,  even  the  most  tragic, 
reconciliation  for  the  traitor,  there  must  be 
other  words  to  be  heard  besides  just  these 

words  of  Paul. 

IV 
Yet  there  are  expositors  of  the  Christian 
idea  of  the  atonement  who  have  developed 
the    various    so-called    "moral    theories"    of 
the  atoning  work  of  Christ.     And  these  men 
indeed   have   still    many   things   to    tell    our 
traitor.  '  One  of  the  most  clearly  written  and, 
from  a  purely  literary  point  of  view,  one  of 
the  most  charming  of  recent  books  on  the 
moral    theory    of    the    idea    of    atonement, 
namely,  the  little  book  with  which   Sabatier 
ended  his  life  work,  very  effectively  contrasts 
with  all  the  "penal  satisfaction"  theories  of 
atonement,   the   doctrine   that   the   work   of 
Christ  consisted  in  such  a  loving  sacrifice  for 
human  sin  and  for  human  sinners  that  the 
contemplation   of   this   work   arouses   in   the 
sinful  mind  a  depth  of  saving  repentance,  as 
well  as  of  love,  —  a  depth  of  glowing  fervor, 
such    as    simply    purifies    the    sinner's    soul. 

*  288 


ATONEMENT 

For  love  and  repentance  and  new  life,  —  these 
constitute  reconciliation.  These,  for  Saba- 
tier, and  for  many  other  representatives  of 
the  "moral  theories"  of  atonement,  —  these 
are  in  themselves  salvation. 

I  need  not  dwell  upon  such  opinions  in  this 
connection.  They  are  nowadays  well  known 
to  all  who  have  read  any  notable  portion  of 
the  recent  literature  of  the  atonement.  They 
are  present  in  this  recent  literature  in  almost 
endless  variations.  In  general  these  views 
are  deep,  and  Christian,  and  cheering,  and 
unquestionably  moral.  And  their  authors 
can  and  do  freely  use  Paul's  words;  and  on 
occasion  supplement  Paul's  words  by  a  cita- 
tion of  the  parables.  In  the  parables  there 
is  no  definite  doctrine  of  atonement  enun- 
ciated. But  there  is  a  doctrine  of  salvation 
through  loving  repentance.  Cannot  our 
traitor,  in  view  of  the  loving  sacrifice  that 
constitutes,  according  to  tradition,  Christ's 
atoning  work,  repent  and  love  ?  Does  that 
not  reconcile  him  ?  May  not  the  love  of 
Christ  both  constrain  and  console  him  ? 
u  289 


( 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


Once   more,   speaking   still   from  his   own 
purely    human    point    of    view,    our    traitor 
sadly  simplifies  the  labor  of  considering  in 
detail   these  various  moral  theories  of  atone- 
ment.    The   traitor   seeks   the   possible,   the 
relative,  the  inevitably  imperfect  reconcilia- 
tion which,  for  one  in  his  case,  is  still  rationally 
definable.     He  discounts  all  that  you  can  say 
as  to  the  transforming  pathos  and  the  com- 
pelling power  of  love,  and  of  the  sacrifices. 
All  this  he  long  since  knows.     And,  as  I  must 
repeat,  all  this  constitutes  the  very  essence  of 
his  own  tragedy.     He  knew  love  before  he 
became  a  traitor.     He  knew  the  love  that  has 
inspired  heroes,  martyrs,  prophets,  and  saviours 
of  mankind.     All  this  he  knew.     And  in  his 
one  traitorous  deed  he  thrust  it  forth.     That 
is  the  very  heart  of  his  problem.     Repent- 
ance ?     Yes,  —  so  far  as  he  now  has  insight, 
—  he  has  repentance  for  his  traitorous  deed. 
He  has  this  repentance,  if  not  as  in  the  form 
of  passionate  remorse,  still  in  the  form  of  an 

290 


ATONEMENT 

irrevocable  condemnation  of  his  own  deed. 
He  has  this  repentance  as  the  very  breath  of 
what  is  now  his  moral  existence  in  the  hell  of 
the  irrevocable. 

As  for  amendment  of  life,  and  good  deeds 
yet  to  come,  he  well  knows  the  meaning 
of  all  these  things.  He  is  ready  to  do  what- 
ever he  can.  But  none  of  all  this  doing 
of  good  works,  none  of  this  repentance,  no 
love,  and  no  tears  will  "lure  back"  the 
"moving  finger"  to  "cancel  half  a  line,"  or 
wash  out  a  word  of  what  is  written.  Once, 
when  the  great  light  first  came,  and  the  one 
who  is  now  the  traitor  saw  what  life  meant, 
his  repentance  —  as  he  then  indeed  repented 
—  reconciled  him  with  his  own  life,  and  did 
so  for  precisely  the  reasons  which  Paul  has 
explained.  But  that  was  his  repentance  for 
the  former  deeds  of  his  folly,  for  the  misad- 
ventures and  the  passions  of  his  helpless  natu- 
ral sinfulness.  He  then  repented,  namely,  of 
what  he  had  done  before  the  light  came. 

But  now  his  state  is  quite  other.     We  know 
why  it  is  other.     And  we  know,  too,  why  the 

291 


i 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

parables  no  longer  can  comfort  the  traitor. 
Their  words  can  at  most  only  remind  him 
of  what  he  himself  best  knows. 

"Thou  knewest,"  says  the  returning  Lord 
to  the  traitor-servant  in  the  parable  of  the 
talents;  *'thou  knewest  that  I  was  a  hard 
master."  And  as  for  our  traitor,  —  so  far 
as  his  one  deed  of  treason  could  express  his 
will,  —  it  was  the  deed  of  one  who  not  merely 
hid  his  talent  in  a  napkin,  but  betrayed  his 
Lord  as  Judas  betrayed.  Therefore  if  atone- 
ment is  to  mean  for  the  traitor  anything  that 
shall  be  in  any  sense  reconciling,  he  must  hear 
of  it  in  some  new  form.  He  is  no  mere 
prodigal  son.  His  problem  is  that  of  the  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Let  us  leave,  then,  both  the  "penal  satis- 
faction" theories  and  the  "moral  theories" 
to  address  themselves  to  other  men.  Our 
traitor  knows  too  well  the  sad  lesson  of  his 
own  deed  to  be  aided  either  by  the  vain  tech- 
nicalities of  the  more  antiquated  of  these  theo- 
logical types  of  theories,  or  by  the  true,  but 
to  him  no  longer  applicable,  comforts  which 

292 


ATONEMENT 

the  theories  of  the  other  — the  moral   type 
—  open  to  his  view. 

Plainly,  then,  the  traitor  himself  can  sug- 
gest nothing  further  as  to  his  own  reconcilia- 
tion with  the  world  where,  by  his  deed  of 
betrayal,  he  once  chose  to  permit  the  light 
that  was  in  him  to  become  darkness.  We 
must  turn  in  another  direction. 

VI 

We   have   so   far   considered   the   traitor's 
case  as  if  his  treason  had  been  merely  an 
affair  of  his  own  inner  life,  —  a  sort  of  secret 
impious  wish.     But  of  course,  while  we  are 
indeed  supposing  the  traitor,  —  now  enlight- 
ened by  the  view  of  his  own  deed,  —  to  be 
the  judge  of  what  he  himself  has  meant  and 
done,  —  we  well  know  that  his  false  deed  was, 
m  his  own  opinion,  no  mere  thought  of  un- 
holiness.     He    had    a    cause.     That    is,    he 
lived  in  a  real  world.     And  he  was  false  to 
his  cause.     He   betrayed.     Now   betrayal   is 
something  objective.     It  breaks  ties.     It  rends 
asunder  what  love  has  joined  in  dear  unity. 

293 


I 


THE    PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 

What  human  ties  the  traitor  broke,  we  leave 
to  him  to  discover  for  himself.  Why  they 
were  to  his  mind  holy,  we  also  need  not  now 
inquire.  Enough,  —  since  he  was  indeed 
loyal,  —  he  had  found  his  ties  ;  —  they  were 
precious  and  human  and  real ;  and  he  believed 
them  holy  ;  —  and  he  broke  them.  That  is, 
so  far  as  in  him  lay,  he  destroyed  by  his 
deed  the  community  in  whose  brotherhood, 
in  whose  life,  in  whose  spirit,  he  had  found 
his  guide  and  his  ideal.  His  deed,  then,  con- 
cerns not  himself  only,  but  that  community 
whereof  he  was  a  voluntary  member.  The 
community  knows,  or  in  the  long  run  must 
learn,  that  the  deed  of  treason  has  been  done, 
even  if,  being  itself  no  searcher  of  hearts,  it 
cannot  identify  the  individual  traitor.  We 
often  know  not  who  the  traitors  are.  But  if 
ours  is  the  community  that  is  wrecked,  we 
may  well  know  by  experience  that  there  has 

been  treason. 

The  problem  of  reconciliation,  then,  — 
if  reconciliation  there  is  to  be,  —  concerns 
not  only  the  traitor,  but  the  wounded  or 

294 


ATONEMENT 

shattered  community.  Endlessly  varied  are 
the  problems  —  the  tragedies,  the  lost  causes, 
the  heartbreaks,  the  chaos,  which  the  deeds 
of  traitors  produce.  All  this  we  merely  hint 
in  passing.  But  all  this  constitutes  the  heart 
of  the  sorrow  of  the  higher  regions  of  our 
human  world.  And  we  here  refer  such  count- 
less, commonplace,  but  crushing  tragedies  to 
these  ruins  which  are  the  daily  harvest-home 
of  treason,  merely  in  order  to  ask  the  ques- 
tion :  Can  a  genuinely  spiritual  community, 
whose  ideals  are  such  as  Paul  loved  to  portray 
when  he  wrote  to  his  churches,  —  can  such 
a  loving  and  beloved  community  in  any  degree 
reconcile  itself  to  the  existence  of  traitors 
in  its  world,  and  to  the  deeds  of  individual 
traitors  ?  Can  it  in  any  wise  find  in  its  world 
something  else,  over  and  above  the  treason, 
—  something  which  atones  for  the  spiritual 
disasters  that  the  very  being  of  treason  both 
constitutes  and  entails  ?  Must  not  the  exist- 
ence of  traitors  remain,  for  the  offended 
community,  an  evil  that  is  as  intolerable  and 
irrevocable  and  as  much  beyond  its  powers  of 

295 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

reconciliation  as  is,  for  the  traitor  himself, 
his  own  past  deed,  seen  in  all  the  light  of  its 
treachery  ?  Can  any  soul  of  good  arise  or 
be  created  out  of  this  evil  thing,  or  as  an  atone- 
ment therefor  ? 

You  see,  I  hope,  that  I  am  in  no  wise  asking 
whether  the  community  which  the  traitor  has 
assailed,  desires,  or  does  well  either  to  inflict 
or  to  remit  any  penalties  said  to  be  due  to 
the  traitor  for  his  deed.  I  am  here  speaking 
wholly  of  the  possibility  of  inner  and  human 
reconciliations.  The  only  penalty  which,  in 
the  hell  of  the  irrevocable,  the  traitor  himself 
inevitably  finds,  is  the  fact:  "I  did  it." 
The  one  irrevocable  fact  with  which  the  com- 
munity can  henceforth  seek  to  be  reconciled, 
if  reconciliation  is  possible,  is  the  fact :  "This 
evil  was  done."  That  is,  "These  invaluable 
ties  were  broken."  This  unity  of  brotherhood 
was  shattered.  The  life  of  the  community,  — 
as  it  was  before  the  blow  of  treason  fell,  — 
can  never  be  restored  to  its  former  purity  of 
unscarred  love.  This  is  the  fact.  For  this 
let  the  community  now  seek,  —  not  oblivion, 

296 


■^^^^^gg^ji^gi^g^gj^ 


loliM'iiliiiifliiflllriNiiBiiiiiirilMii^ 


ATONEMENT 


for  that  is  a  mere  losing  of  the  truth ;  not 
annulment,  for  that  is  impossible;  but  some 
measure  of  reconciliation. 

For  the  community,  as  I  am  now  viewing 
its  ideal  but  still  distinctly  human  life,  the 
question  is  not  one  of  what  we  usually  call 
"forgiveness."  If  "forgiveness "  means  simply 
an  affectionate  remission  of  penalty,  that  is 
something  which,  for  a  given  community, 
may  be  not  only  humanly  possible,  but  ob- 
viously both  wise  and  desirable.  Penalty  is 
no  remedy  for  the  irrevocable.  Forgiveness 
is  often  both  reasonable  and  convenient.  Nor 
need  the  question  be  raised  as  to  whether 
the  community  could  ever  trust  the  traitor 
with  the  old  hearty  human,  although  always 
fallible,  confidence.  What  the  community 
can  know  is  —  not  the  traitor's  heart,  but 
the  fact  —  manifest  through  the  shattered 
ties  and  the  broken  spiritual  life,  —  the  fact 
that  a  deed  of  treason  has  been  done.  That 
the  deed  was  the  voluntary  work  of  just 
this  traitor,  the  community  can  learn  only  as 
a   matter   of   probable    opinion,    or   perhaps 

297 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

through  the  traitor's  confession.  But,  just 
as  the  community  cannot  now  search  the 
traitor's  heart,  or  know  whether  he  will 
hereafter  repeat  his  treason  in  some  new  form, 

—  just  so,  too,  it  never  has  been  able,  before 
the  deed  of  treason  was  committed,  to  search 
the  hearts  of  any  of  its  free  and  loyal  members, 
and  to  know  whether,  in  fact,  its  trust  was 
wholly  well  founded  when  it  believed,  or 
hoped,  that  just  this  treason  would  never  be 
committed  by  any  one  of  the  members  whom 
it  fondly  trusted. 

All  the  highest  forms-  of  the  unity  of  the 
spirit,  in  our  human  world,  constantly  depend, 
for  their  very  existence,  upon  the  renewed 
free  choices,  the  sustained  loyalty,  of  the 
members  of  communities.  Hence  the  very 
best  that  we  know,  namely,  the  loyal  brother- 
hood of  the  faithful  who  choose  to  keep  their 
faith,  —  this  best  of  all  human  goods,  I  say, 

—  is  simply  inseparable  from  countless  possi- 
bilities of  the  worst  of  human  tragedies,  —  the 
tragedy  of  broken  faith.  At  such  cost  must 
the  loftiest  of  our  human  possessions  in  the 

298 


ATONEMENT 

realm   of  the   spirit   be  purchased,  —  at  the 
cost,  namely,  of  knowing  that  some  deed  of 
wilful  treason  on  the  part  of  some  one  whom 
we  trusted  as  brother  or  as  beloved  may  rob 
us  of  this  possession.     And  the  fact  that  we 
are    thus    helplessly    dependent    on    human 
fidelity  for  some  of  our  highest  goods,  and 
so  may  be  betrayed,  —  this  fact  is  due  not  to 
the  natural  perversity  of  men,  nor  to  the  mere 
weakness  of  those  who  love  and  trust.     This 
fact  is  due  to  something  which,  without  any 
metaphysical  theory,  we  ordinarily  call  man's 
freedom    of   choice.     We    do    not    want   our 
beloved  community  to  consist  of  puppets,  or 
of  merely  fascinated  victims  of  a  mechanically 
insistent  love.     We  want  the  free  loyalty  of 
those  who,  whatever  fascination  first  won  them 
to  their  cause,  remain  faithful  because  they 
choose  to  remain  faithful.     Of  such  is  the  king- 
dom of  good  faith.     The  beloved  community 
demands  for  itself  such  freely  and  deliberately 
steadfast  members.     And  for  that  very  reason, 
in  a  world  where  there  is  such  free  and  good 
faith,  —  there    can    be    treason.     Hence    the 

299 


THE   PROB-LEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

realm  where  the  spirit  reaches  the  highest 
human  levels  is  the  region  where  the  worst 
calamities  can,  and  in  the  long  run  do,  assail 
many  who  depend  upon  the  good  faith  of 
their  brethren. 

The  community,  therefore,  never  had  any 
grounds,  before  the  treason,  for  an  absolute 
assurance  about  the  future  traitor's  perse- 
verance in  the  faith.  After  his  treason,  if 
indeed  he  repents  and  now  begins  once  more 
to  act  loyally,  —  it  may  acquire  a  relative 
assurance  that  he  will  henceforth  abide  faith- 
ful. The  worst  evil  is  not,  then,  that  a  trust 
in  the  traitor,  which  once  was  rightly  serene 
and  perfectly  confident,  is  now  irrevocably 
lost.  It  is  not  this  which  constitutes  the 
irreconcilable  aspect  of  the  traitor's  deed. 
All  men  are  frail.  And  especially  must  those 
who  are  freely  loyal  possess  a  certain  freedom 
to  become  faithless  if  they  choose.  This 
evil  is  a  condition  of  the  highest  good  that 
the  human  world  contains.  And  so  much  the 
community,  in  presence  of  the  traitor,  ought 
to  recognize  as  something  that  was  always 

300 


N 


ATONEMENT 

possible.  It  also  ought  to  know  that  a  cer- 
tain always  fallible  trust  in  the  traitor  can 
indeed  be  restored  by  his  future  good  deeds, 
if  such  are  done  by  him  with  every  sign  that 
he  intends  henceforth  to  be  faithful. 

But  what  is  indeed  irrevocably  lost  to  the 
community  through  the  traitor's  deed  is 
precisely  what  I  just  called  "unscarred  love." 
The  traitor  remains  —  for  the  community  as 
well  as  for  himself  —  the  traitor,  —  just  so 
far  as  his  deed  is  confessed,  and  just  so  far 
as  his  once  unsullied  fidelity  has  been  stained. 
This  indeed  is  irrevocable.  It  is  perfectly 
human.  But  it  is  unutterably  comfortless  to 
the  shattered  community. 

It  is  useless,  then,  to  say  that  the  problem 
of  reconciliation,  so  far  as  the  community  is 
concerned,  is  the  problem  of  ** forgiveness," 
not  now  as  remission  of  penalty,  but  of  for- 
giveness, in  so  far  as  forgiveness  means  a 
restoring  of  the  love  of  the  community,  or 
of  its  members,  towards  the  one  who  has 
now  sinned,  but  repented.  Love  may  be 
restored.     If    the    traitor's    future    attitude 

301 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

makes  that  possible,  human  love  ought  to 
be  restored  to  the  now  both  repentant  and 
well-serving  doer  of  the  past  evil  deed.  But 
alas  !  this  restored  love  will  be  the  love  for 
the  member  who  has  been  a  traitor;  and  the 
tragedy  of  the  treason  will  permanently  form 
part  in  and  of  this  love.  Thus,  then,  up  to 
this  point,  there  appears  for  the  community 
as  well  as  for  the  traitor,  no  ground  for 
even  the  imperfect  reconciliation  of  which 
we  have  been  in  search.  Is  there,  then,  any 
other  way,  still  untried,  in  which  the  com- 
munity may  hope,  if  not  to  find,  then  to 
create  something  which,  in  its  ow^n  strictly 
limited  fashion,  will  reconcile  the  community 
to  the  traitor  and  to  the  irrevocable,  and 
irrevocably  evil,  deed. 

VII 

Such  a  way  exists.  The  community  can- 
not undo  the  traitor's  deed,  and  cannot  simply 
annul  the  now  irrevocable  fact  of  the  evil 
which  has  been  accomplished.  Penalty,  even 
if  called  for,  annuls  nothing  of  all  that  has 

302 


ATONEMENT 

been  done.  Repentance  does  not  turn  back- 
wards the  flow  of  time.  Restored  and  alwavs 
fallible  human  confidence  in  the  traitor's 
good  intentions  regarding  his  future  deeds, 
is  not  true  reconciliation.  Forgiveness  does 
not  wash  out  a  word  of  the  record  that  the 
moving  finger  of  treason  has  written.  The 
love  of  the  forgiving  community,  or  of  its 
members,  for  the  repentant  and  now  well- 
doing traitor,  is  indeed  a  great  good  ;  but  it  is 
a  love  that  has  forever  lost  one  of  its  most 
cherished  possessions,  —  the  possession  of  a 
loyal  member  who,  in  the  old  times  before 
the  treason,  not  only  loved,  but,  so  far,  had 
steadfastly  kept  his  faith.  By  all  these  means, 
then,  no  atonement  is  rendered  to  the  com- 
munity. Neither  hatred  nor  penalty  need 
be,  from  the  side  of  the  community,  in  any 
wise  in  question.  But  the  fact  remains: 
The  community  has  lost  its  treasure;  its 
once  faithful  member  who,  until  his  deed  of 
treason  came,  had  been  wholly  its  own 
member.  And  it  has  lost  the  ties  and  the 
union  which  he  destroyed  by  his  deed.    And, 

303 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

for  all  this  loss,  it  lovingly  mourns  with  a 
sorrow  for  which,  thus  far,  we  see  no  recon- 
ciliation. Who  shall  give  to  it  its  own  again  ? 
The  community,  then,  can  indeed  find 
no  reconciliation.  But  can  it  create  one  ? 
At  the  worst,  it  is  the  traitor,  and  it  is  not 
the  community,  that  has  done  this  deed. 
New  deeds  remain  to  be  done.  The  com- 
munity is  free  to  do  them,  or  to  be  incarnate 
in  some  faithful  servant  who  will  do  them. 
Could  any  possible  new  deed,  done  by,  or  on 
behalf  of,  the  community,  and  done  by  some 
one  who  is  not  stained  by  the  traitor's  deed, 
introduce  into  this  human  world  an  element 
which,  as  far  as  it  went,  would  be,  in  whatever 
measure,  genuinely  reconciling  ? 


VIII 

We  stand  at  the  very  heart  and  centre  of 
the  human  problem  of  atonement.  We  have 
just  now  nothing  to  do  with  theological  opin- 
ion on  this  topic.  I  insist  that  our  problem 
is  as  familiar  and  empirical  as  is  death  or 
grief.     That  problem  of  atonement  daily  arises 

304 


ATONEMENT 


not  as  between  God  and  man  (for  we  here  are 
simply  ignoring,  for  the  time  being,  the  meta- 
physical issues  that  lie  behind  our  problem). 
That  problem  is  daily  faced  by  all  those  faith- 
ful lovers  of  wounded  and  shattered  com- 
munities who,  going  down  into  the  depths  of 
human  sorrow,  either  as  sufferers  or  as  friends 
who  would  fain  console,  or  who,  standing 
by  hearths  whose  fires  burn  no  more,  or 
loving  their  country  through  all  the  sorrows 
which  traitors  have  inflicted  upon  her,  or 
who,  not  weakly,  but  bravely  grieving  over  the 
woe  of  the  whole  human  world,  are  still 
steadily  determined  that  no  principality  and 
no  power,  that  no  height  and  no  depth, 
shall  be  able  to  separate  man  from  his  true 
love,  which  is  the  triumph  of  the  spirit. 
That  human  problem  of  atonement  is,  I  say 
daily  faced,  and  faced  by  the  noblest  of 
mankind.  And  for  these  our  noblest,  despite 
all  our  human  weakness,  that  problem  is, 
in  principle  and  in  ideal,  daily  solved.  Let  us 
turn  to  such  leaders  of  the  human  search 
after  greatness,  as  our  spiritual  guides. 
X  305 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Great  calamities  are,  for  all  but  the  traitor 
himself,  —  so  far  as  we  have  yet  considered 
his  case,  —  great  opportunities.  Lost  causes 
have  furnished,  times  without  number,  the 
foundations  and  the  motives  of  humanity's 
most  triumphant  loyalty. 

When  treason  has  done  its  last  and  most 
cruel  work,  and  lies  with  what  it  has  de- 
stroyed, —  dead  in  the  tomb  of  the  irrevocable 
past,  —  there  is  now  the  opportunity  for  a 
triumph  of  which  I  can  only  speak  weakly 
and  in  imperfectly  abstract  formulas.  But, 
as  I  can  at  once  say,  this  of  which  I  now  speak 
is  a  human  triumph.  It  forms  part  of  the 
history  of  man's  earthly  warfare  with  his 
worst  foes.  Moreover,  whenever  it  occurs 
at  all,  this  is  a  triumph,  not  merely  of  stoical 
endurance,  nor  yet  of  kindly  forgiveness,  nor 
of  the  mystical  mood  which,  seeing  all  things 
in  God,  feels  theni  all  to  be  good.  It  is  a 
triumph  of  the  creative  will.  And  what 
form  does  it  take  amongst  the  best  of  men, 
who  are  here  to  be  our  guides  ? 

I  answer,  this  triumph  over  treason  can 

306 


1 


I 


I 


ATONEMENT 

only  be  accomplished  by  the  community,  or 
on  behalf  of  the  community,  through  some 
steadfastly  loyal  servant  who  acts,  so  to  speak, 
as  the  incarnation  of  the  very  spirit  of  the 
community  itself.     This  faithful  and  suffering 
servant  of  the  community  may  answer  and 
confound   treason    by   a  work  whose   type  I 
shall   next   venture   to   describe,   in   my  own 
way,  thus:    First,    this   creative    work   shall 
include  a  deed,  or  various  deeds,  for  which 
only  just  this   treason   furnishes   the  oppor- 
tunity.    Not  treason  in  general,  but  just  this 
individual    treason    shall    give    the   occasion, 
and  supply  the  condition  of  the  creative  deed 
which    I    am    in    ideal    describing.     Without 
just   that  treason,   this   new  deed    (so  I  am 
supposing)  could  not  have  been  done  at  all. 
And  hereupon  the  new  deed,  as  I  suppose,  is 
so  ingeniously  devised,  so  concretely  practical 
m  the  good  which  it  accomplishes,  that,  when 
you  look  down  upon  the  human  world  after 
the  new  creative  deed  has  been  done  in  it, 
you  say,  first,  "This  deed  was  made  possible  I 
by  that  treason;    and,  secondly.   The  world, 

307 


^ 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

as  transformed  by  this  creative  deed,  is  better 
than  it  would  have  been  had  all  else  remained 
the  same,  but  had  that  deed  of  treason  not  been 
done  at  alV  That  is,  the  new  creative  deed 
has  made  the  new  world  better  than  it  was 
before  the  blow  of  treason  fell. 

Now  such  a  deed  of  the  creative  love  and 
of  the  devoted  ingenuity  of  the  suffering 
servant,  on  behalf  of  his  community,  breaks 
open,  as  it  were,  the  tomb  of  the  dead  and 
treacherous  past,  and  comes  forth  as  the  life 
and  the  expression  of  the  creative  and  recon- 
ciling will.  It  is  this  creative  will  whose 
ingenuity  and  whose  skill  have  executed  the 
deed  that  makes  the  human  world  better 
than  it  was  before  the  treason. 

To  devise  and  to  carry  out  some  new  deed 
which  makes  the  human  world  better  than  it 
would  have  been  had  just  that  treasonable 
deed  not  been  done;  — is  that  not,  in  its 
own  limited  way  and  sense,  a  reconciling  form, 
both  of  invention  and  of  conduct?  Let  us 
forget,  for  the  moment,  the  traitor.  Let  us 
now  think  only  of  the  community.     We  know 

308 


ATONEMENT 


why  and  in  what  sense  it  cannot  be  recon- 
ciled to  the  traitor  or  to  his  deed.  But  have 
we  not  found,  without  any  inconsistency,  a 
new  fact  which  furnishes  a  genuinely  recon- 
ciling element  ^  It  indeed  furnishes  no  per- 
fect reconciliation  with  the  irrevocable;  but 
it  transforms  the  meaning  of  that  very  past 
which  it  cannot  undo.  It  cannot  restore  the 
unscarred  love.  It  does  supply  a  new  triumph 
of  the  spirit,  —  a  triumph  which  is  not  so 
much  a  mere  compensation  for  what  has  been 
lost,  as  a  transfiguration  of  the  very  loss  into 
a  gain  that,  without  this  very  loss,  could 
never  have  been  won.  The  traitor  cannot 
thus  transform  the  meaning  of  his  own  past. 
But  the  suffering  servant  can  thus  transfigure 
this  meaning;  can  bring  out  of  the  realm  of 
death  a  new  life  that  only  this  very  death 
rendered  possible. 

The  triumph  of  the  spirit  of  the  community 
over  the  treason  which  was  its  enemy,  the 
rewinning  of  the  value  of  the  traitor's  own 
life,  when  the  new  deed  is  done,  involves  the 
old  tragedy,  but  takes  up  that  tragedy  into 

309 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


ATONEMENT 


a  life  that  is  now  more  a  life  of  triumph  than 
it  would  have  been  if  the  deed  of  treason  had 
never  been  done. 

Therefore,  if  indeed  you  suppose  or  observe 
that,  in  our  human  world,  such  creative  deeds 
occur,  you  see  that  they  indeed  do  not  remove, 
they  do  not  annul,  either  treason  or  its 
tragedy.  But  they  do  show  us  a  genuinely 
reconciling,  a  genuinely  atoning,  fact  in  the 
world  and  in  the  community  of  the  traitor. 
Those  who  do  such  deeds  solve,  I  have  just 
said,  not  the  impossible  problem  of  undoing 
the  past,  but  the  genuine  problem  of  finding, 
even  in  the  worst  of  tragedies,  the  means  of 
an  otherwise  impossible  triumph.  They  meet 
the  deepest  and  bitterest  of  estrangements 
by  showing  a  way  of  reconciliation,  and  a 
way  that  only  this  very  estrangement  has 
made  possible.^ 

^The  view  with  regard  to  Atonement  stated  in  the  text  was 
reached  by  me  quite  independently  of  any  knowledge  on  my  part 
of  the  remarkable  book  of  Mr.  Charles  Allen  Dinsmore  :  "  Atonement 
in  Literature  and  Life"  (Boston,  1906).  I  am  glad  to  find  myself  in 
close  agreement  with  some  of  the  essential  features  of  Mr.  Dinsmore's 
position.  He  has  especially  called  my  attention  to  Milton's  illustr^- 
tioo  of  this  view  of  Adam's  case. 

310 


t 


^^ji^ 


IX 

This  is  the  human  aspect  of  the  idea  of 
atonement.     Do  we  need  to  solve  our  theo- 
logical   problems    before    we   decide   whether 
such  an  idea  has  meaning,  and  is  ethically 
defensible.^     I    must    insist    that    this    idea 
comes  to  us,  not  from  the  scholastic  quiet  of 
theological  speculation,  but  stained  with  the 
blood  of   the  battle-fields  of   real    life.     For 
myself,  I  can  say  that  no  theological  theory 
suggested   to   me   this   interpretation   of   the 
essential  nature  of  an  atoning  deed.     I  can- 
not call  the  interpretation  new,  simply  because 
I  myself  have  learned  it  from  observing  the 
meaning  of  the  lives  of  some  suffering  ser- 
vants, —  plain   human    beings,  —  who    never 
cared   for   theology,   but   who   incarnated   in 
their  own  fashion  enough  of  the  spirit  of  their 
community   to   conceive   and   to   accomplish 
such  new  and  creative  deeds  as  I  have  just 
attempted    to   characterize.     To   try   to   de- 
scribe to  you,  at  all  adequately,  the  life  or 

311 


iiiitiffftHltiitilinT 


diiiMigaj&farifeiiiriUftaiiiiff.waiiift^^ 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  work  of  any  such  persons,  I  have  neither 
the  right  nor  the  power.  Here  is  no  place 
for  such  a  collection  and  analysis  of  the  human 
form  of  the  atoning  life  as  only  a  William 
James  could  have  justly  accomplished.  And 
upon  personal  histories  I  could  dwell,  in  this 
place,  only  at  the  risk  of  intruding  upon  lives 
which  I  have  been  privileged  sometimes  to 
see  afar  off,  and  briefly,  but  which  I  have  no 
right  to  report  as  mere  illustrations  of  a 
philosophical  argument.  It  is  enough,  I  think, 
for  me  barely  to  indicate  what  I  have  in  mind 
when  I  say  that  such  things  are  done  amongst 
men. 

All  of  us  well  know  of  great  public  bene- 
factors whose  lives  and  good  works  have  been 
rendered  possible  through  the  fact  that  some 
great  personal  sorrow,  some  crushing  blow  of 
private  grief  first  descended,  and  seemed  to 
wreck  their  lives.  Such  heroic  souls  have 
then  been  able,  in  these  well-known  types  of 
cases,  not  only  to  bear  their  own  grief,  and 
to  rise  from  the  depths  of  it  (as  we  all  in  our 
time  have  to  attempt  to  do) .     They  have  been 

312 


* 


ATONEMENT 

able  also  to  use  their  grief  as  the  very  source 
of  the  new  arts  and  inventions  and  labors 
whereby  they  have  become  such  valuable 
servants  of  their  communities.  Such  people 
indeed  often  remind  us  of  the  suffering  servant 
in  Isaiah ;  for  their  life  work  shows  that  they 
are  willing  to  be  wounded  for  the  sake  of 
their  community.  Indirectly,  too,  they  often 
seem  to  be  suffering  because  of  the  faults  as 
well  as  because  of  the  g^'iefs  of  their  neighbors, 
or  of  mankind.  And  it  indeed  often  occurs 
to  us  to  speak  of  these  public  or  private 
benefactors  as  living  some  sort  of  atoning 
life,  as  bearing,  in  a  sense,  not  only  the  sor- 
rows, but  the  sins  of  other  men. 

Yet  it  is  not  of  such  lives,  noble  as  they 
are,  that  I  am  now  thinking  —  nor  of  such 
vicarious  suffering,  of  such  sympathizing 
helpfulness  in  human  woe,  of  such  rising 
from  private  grief  to  public  service,  —  that 
I  am  now  speaking,  when  I  say  that  atoning 
deeds,  in  the  more  precise  sense  just  described, 
are  indeed  done  in  our  human  world.  Sharply 
contrasted   with   these   beneficent   lives   and 

313 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

deeds,  which  I  have  just  mentioned,  are  the 
other  lives  of  which  I  am  thinking,  and  to 
which,  in  speaking  of  atonement,  I  have  been 
referring.  These  are  the  Hves  of  which  I 
have  so  Httle  right  to  give  more  than  a  bare 
hint  in  this  place. 

One's  private  grief  may  be  the  result  of  the 
deed  of  a  traitor.  That  again  is  something 
which  often  seems  to  hai)pen  in  our  human 
world.  One  may  rally  from  the  despair  due 
to  even  such  a  blow,  and  may  later  become  a 
public  benefactor.  We  all  know,  I  suppose, 
people  who  have  done  that,  and  whose  lives 
are  the  nobler  and  more  serviceable  because 
they  have  conquered  such  a  grief,  and  have 
learned  great  lessons  through  such  a  conquest. 
Yet  even  such  lives  do  not  show  exactly  the 
reconciling  and  atoning  power  that  I  now  most 
have  in  mind.  Let  me  next  state  a  mere 
supposition. 

Suppose  a  community,  —  a  modern  com- 
munity, —  to  be  engaged  with  the  ideals 
and  methods  of  modem  reform,  in  its  contests 
with   some  of  those  ills   which   the   natural 

314 


i 


ATONEMENT 

viciousness,  the  evil  training,  and  the  treason- 
able choices  of  very  many  people  combine  to 
make  peculiarly  atrocious  in  the  eyes  of  all 
who  love  mankind.  Such  evils  need  to  be  met, 
in  the  good  warfare,  not  only  by  indignant 
reformers,  not  only  by  ardent  enthusiasts, 
but  also  by  calmly  considerate  and  enlightened 
people,  who  distinguish  clearly  between  fervor 
and  wisdom,  who  know  what  depths  of  woe 
and  of  wrong  are  to  be  sounded,  but  who  also 
know  that  only  self-controlled  thoughtful- 
ness  and  well-disciplined  self-restraint  can 
devise  the  best  means  of  help.  As  w^e  also 
well  know,  we  look,  in  our  day,  to  highly 
trained  professional  skill  for  aid  in  such  work. 
We  do  not  hope  that  those  who  are  merely 
well-meaning  and  loving  can  do  what  most 
needs  to  be  done.  We  desire  those  who  know. 
Let  us  suppose,  then,  such  a  modern  com- 
munity as  especially  needing,  for  a  very 
special  purpose,  one  who  does  know. 

Hereupon  let  us  suppose  that  one  individual 
exists  whose  life  has  been  wounded  to  the 
core  by  some  of  treason's  worst  blows.     Let 

315 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

US  suppose  one  who,  always  manifesting  true 
loyalty  and  steadfastly  keeping  strict  integ- 
rity, has  known,  not  merely  what  the  ordinary 
professional  experts  learn,  but  also  what  it  is 
to  be  despised  and  rejected  of  men,  and  to 
be  brought  to  the  very  depths  of  lonely  deso- 
lation, and  to  have  suffered  thus  through  a 
treason  which  also  deeply  affected,  not  one 
individual  only,  but  a  whole  community. 
Let  such  a  soul,  humiliated,  offended,  broken, 
so  to  speak,  through  the  very  effort  to  serve  a 
community,  forsaken,  long  daily  fed  only  by 
grief,  yet  still  armed  with  the  grace  of  loyalty 
and  of  honor,  and  with  the  heroism  of  dumb 
suffering,  —  let  such  a  soul  not  only  arise, 
as  so  many  great  sufferers  have  done,  from  the 
depths  of  woe,  —  let  such  a  soul  not  only 
triumph,  as  so  many  have  done,  over  the 
grief  that  treason  caused;  but  let  such 
a  soul  also  use  the  very  lore  which  just  this 
treason  had  taught,  in  order  to  begin  a  new 
life  work.  Let  this  life  work  be  full  of  a 
shrewd,  practical,  serviceable,  ingenious  wis- 
dom which  only  that  one  individual  experi- 

316 


ATONEMENT 


ence  of  a  great  treason  could  have  taught. 
Let  this  new  life  work  be  made  possible  only 
because  of  that  treason.  Let  it  bring  to  the 
community,  in  the  contest  with  great  public 
evils,  methods  and  skill  and  judgment  and 
forethought  which  only  that  so  dear-bought 
wisdom  could  have  invented.  Let  these 
methods  have,  in  fact,  a  skill  that  the  traitor's 
own  wit  has  taught,  and  that  is  now  used  for 
the  good  work.  Let  that  life  show,  not  only 
what  treason  can  do  to  wreck,  but  what  the 
free  spirit  can  learn  from  and  through  the 
very  might  of  treason's  worst  skill. 

If  you  will  conceive  of  such  a  life  merely  as 
a  possibility,  you  may  know  why  I  assert  that 
genuinely  atoning  deeds  occur,  and  what  I 
believe  such  deeds  to  be.  For  myself,  any 
one  who  should  supply  the  facts  to  bear  out 
my  supposition  (  and  such  people,  as  I  assert, 
there  are  in  our  human  world)  would  appear 
henceforth  to  me  to  be  a  sort  of  symbolic 
personality,  —  one  who  had  descended  into 
hell  to  set  free  the  spirits  who  are  in  prison. 
When  I  hear  those  words,  "descended  into 

317 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

hell,"  repeated  in  the  creed,  I  think  of  such 
human  beings,  and  feel  that  I  know  at  least 
some  in  our  human  world  to  whom  the  creed 
in  these  words  refers. 


Hereupon,  you  may  very  justly  say  that 
the  mere  effects  of  the  atoning  deeds  of  a 
human  individual  are  in  this  world  appar- 
ently petty  and  transient;  and  that  even 
the  most  atoning  of  sacrificial  human  lives 
can  devise  nothing  which,  within  the  range 
of  our  vision,  does  make  the  world  of  the 
community  better,  in  any  of  its  most  tragic 
aspects,  than  it  would  be  if  no  treason  had 
been  committed. 

If  you  say  this,  you  merely  give  me  the 
opportunity  to  express  the  human  aspect  of 
the  idea  of  the  atonement  in  a  form  very  near 
to  the  form  which,  as  I  believe,  the  Christian 
idea  of  atonement  has  always  possessed  when 
the  interests  of  the  religious  consciousness 
(or,  if  I  may  use  the  now  favorite  word,  the 
subconsciousness)  of  the  Church,  rather  than 

318 


t 


ATONEMENT 

the  theological  formulations  of  the  theory  of 
atonement,  have  been  in  question.  Christian 
feeling.  Christian  art,  Christian  worship,  have 
been  full  of  the  sense  that  somehow  (and  how 
has  remained  indeed  a  mystery)  there  was 
something  so  precious  about  the  work  of 
Christ,  something  so  divinely  wise  (so  skil- 
ful and  divinely  beautiful  ?)  about  the  plan 
of  salvation,  —  that,  as  a  result  of  all  this, 
after  Christ's  work  was  done,  the  world  as 
a  whole  was  a  nobler  and  richer  and  worthier 
creation  than  it  would  have  been  if  Adam  had 
not  sinned. 

This,  I  insist,  has  always  been  felt  to  be 
the  sense  of  the  atoning  work  which  the  faith 
has  attributed  to  Christ.  A  glance  at  a 
great  Madonna,  a  chord  of  truly  Christian 
music,  ancient  or  modern,  tells  you  that  this 
is  so.  And  this  sense  of  the  atoning  work 
cannot  be  reduced  to  what  the  modern 
"moral"  theories  of  the  Christian  atonement 
most  emphasize. 

For  what  the  Christian  regards  as  the  aton- 
ing work  of  Christ  is,  from  this  point  of  view, 

319 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

not  something  about  Christ's  work  which 
merely  arouses  in  sinful  man  love  and  repent- 
ance. 

No,  the  theory  of  atonement  which  I 
now  suggest,  and  which,  as  I  insist,  is  sub- 
consciously present  in  the  religious  senti- 
ment, ritual,  and  worship  of  all  Christendom, 
is  a  perfectly  "objective"  theory,  —  quite 
as  "objective"  as  any  "penal  satisfaction" 
theory  could  be.  Christian  religious  feeling 
has  always  expressed  itself  in  the  idea  that 
what  atones  is  something  perfectly  "objec- 
tive," namely,  Christ's  work.  And  this  aton- 
ing work  of  Christ  was  for  Christian  feeling 
a  deed  that  was  made  possible  only  through 
man's  sin,  but  that  somehow  was  so  wise  and 
so  rich  and  so  beautiful  and  divinely  fair  that, 
after  this  work  was  done,  the  world  was  a  , 
better  world  than  it  would  have  been  had 
man   never   sinned. 

So  the  Christian  consciousness,  I  insist, 
has  always  felt.  So  its  poets  have  often, 
in  one  way  or  another,  expressed  the  matter. 
The   theologians   have  disguised   this  simple 

320 


ATONEMENT 

idea  under  countless  forms.  But  every 
characteristically  Christian  act  of  worship 
expresses  it  afresh.  Treason  did  its  work  (so 
the  legend  runs)  when  man  fell.  But  Christ's 
work  was  so  perfect  that,  in  a  perfectly  ob- 
jective way,  it  took  the  opportunity  which 
man's  fall  furnished  to  make  the  world  better 
than  it  could  have  been  had  man  not  fallen. 

But  this  is  indeed,  as  an  idea  concerning 
God  and  the  universe  and  the  work  of  Christ, 
an  idea  wJiich  is  as  human  in  its  spirit,  and 
as  deep  in  its  relation  to  truth,  as  it  is,  in 
view  of  the  complexity  of  the  values  which 
are  in  question,  hard  either  to  articulate  or  to 
defend.  How  should  we  know,  unless  some 
revelation  helped  us  to  know,  whether  and 
in  what  way  Christ's  supposed  work  made 
the  world  better  than  it  would  have  been  had 
man  not  sinned  ? 

But  in  this  discussion  I  am  speaking  of  the 
purely  human  aspect  of  the  idea  of  atone- 
ment. That  aspect  is  now  capable  of  a  state- 
ment which  does  not  pretend  to  deal  with 
any  but  our  human  world,  and  which  fully 

T  321 


^ 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

admits  the  pettiness  of  every  human  individual 
effort  to  produce  such  a  really  atoning  deed 
as  we  have  described. 

The  human  community,  depending,  as  it 
does,  upon  its  loyal  human  lovers,  and  wounded 
to  the  heart  by  its  traitors,  and  finding,  the 
farther  it  advances  in  moral  worth,  the 
greater  need  of  the  loyal,  and  the  greater 
depth  of  the  tragedy  of  treason,  —  utters  its 
own  doctrine  of  atonement  as  this  postulate, 
—  the  central  postulate  of  its  highest  spirit- 
uality. This  postulate  I  word  thus:  No 
baseness  or  cruelty  of  treason  so  deep  ^  or  so 
tragic  shall  enter  our  human  tvorldy  but  that 
loyal  love  shall  be  able  in  due  time  to  oppose 
to  just  that  deed  of  treason  its  fitting  deed 
of  atonement.  The  deed  of  atonement  shall 
be  so  wise  and  so  rich  in  its  elBBcacy,  that  the 
spiritual  world,  after  the  atoning  deed,  shall 
be  better,  richer,  more  triumphant  amidst 
all  its  irrevocable  tragedies,  than  it  was 
before  that  traitor's  deed  was  done. 

This  is  the  postulate  of  the  highest  form  of 
human  spirituality.     It  cannot  be  proved  by 

322 


ATONEMENT 

the  study  of  mankind  as  they  are.  It  can  be 
asserted  by  the  creative  will  of  the  loyal. 
Christianity  expressed  this  postulate  in  the 
symbolic  form  of  a  report  concerning  the 
supernatural  work  of  Christ.  Humanity  must 
express  it  through  the  devotion,  the  genius, 
the  skill,  the  labor  of  the  individual  loyal 
servants  in  whom  its  spirit  becomes  incarnate. 
As  a  Christian  idea,  the  atonement  is 
expressed  in  a  symbol,  whose  divine  inter- 
pretation is  merely  felt,  and  is  viewed  as  a 
mystery.  As  a  human  idea,  atonement  is 
expressed  (so  far  as  it  can  at  any  one  time 
be  expressed)  by  a  peculiarly  noble  and 
practically  efficacious  type  of  human  deeds. 
This  human  idea  of  atonement  is  also  expressed 
in  a  postulate  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  all 
the  best  and  most  practical  spirituality. 
The  Christian  symbol  and  the  practical 
postulate  are  two  sides  of  the  same  life, — 
at  once  human  and  divine. 


(U. 


323 


VII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 


/ 


LECTURE   VII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

rpHROUGHOUT  these  lectures,  both  the 
A    contrast  and  the  close  connection  be- 
tween ethical  and  religious  ideas  have  been 
illustrated.     Ethical  ideas  define  the  nature 
of  righteous  conduct.     Religious  ideas  have 
to  do  with  bringing  us  into  union  with  some 
supremely    valuable    form    or    level    of    life. 
Morality  gives   us  counsel   as   to  our   duty. 
Religion,    pointing    out    to    us    the    natural 
poverty  and  failure  which  beset  our  ordinary 
existence,  undertakes  to  show  us  some  way 
of  salvation.     Ethical  teachings  direct  us  to 
a  better  mode  of  living.     Religion  undertakes 
to  lead  us  to  a  home-land  where  we  may  wit- 
ness, and,  if  we  are  successful,  may  share  some 
supreme  fulfilment  of  the  purpose  for  which 
we  live.     In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the 
counsel,  **  Judge  not  that  ye  be  not  judged," 
is    ethical;      the    beatitudes     are    religious. 
Wlien  Paul  rebukes  the  Corinthians  for  their 

327 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

disputes,  his  teaching  is,  in  so  far,  ethical. 
When  he  writes  the  great  chapter  on  Charity, 
his  doctrine  is  rehgious. 

Now  what  I  here  mean  by  a  "doctrine  of 
Hfe"  comprises  both  ethical  and  religious 
elements.  It  brings  these  elements  into  unity, 
and,  if  it  is  a  sound  doctrine,  it  gives  us  both 
a  connected  survey  of  some  notable  portion 
of  our  duty,  and  an  insight  into  the  nature 
.    and    source   of   the   supreme   values    of   our 

existence. 

A  religious  doctrine  very  generally  includes 
some  assertions  about  the  real  world  such 
that  they  can  be  elaborately  tested  only  in 
case  one  is  willing  to  undertake  a  metaphysical 
inquiry.  But,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen 
in  these  lectures,  both  ethical  and  religious 
doctrines  also  deal  with  many  matters  which 
we  can  test,  sufficiently  for  some  of  our  most 
serious  purposes,  without  raising  issues  which 
are  technically  and  formally  metaphysical. 
And  that  is  why  we  have  so  far  postponed  any 
metaphysical  study  of  the  foundations  which 
the    various    essential    ideas    of    Christianity 

328 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

possess  in  the  nature  of  the  real  universe. 
Both  the  ethical  significance  and  the  religious 
spirit  which  these  ideas  assure,  we  could  in 
large  measure  estimate  merely  by  taking  ac- 
count of  the  acknowledged  facts  of  human 
nature. 

A  doctrine  of  lif^  —  that  is,  a  coherent 
and  comprehensive  teaching  concerning  both 
the  moral  conduct  of  life,  and  the  realm  where- 
in the  highest  good  is  to  be  hoped  for,  sought, 
and,  haply,  won  —  will  therefore,  like  the 
various  ethical  and  religious  ideas  which  in- 
form such  a  general  survey  and  estimate  of 
human  life,  arouse  many  metaphysical  ques- 
tions. But,  in  large  part,  it  can  be  both 
stated  and  estimated  without  answering  these 
metaphysical  questions  in  a  technical  way. 

The  present  lecture  is  to  be  devoted* to 
bringing  together  the  essential  Christian  ideas 
which  we  have  considered  in  the  foregoing 
discussions,  and  to  stating,  as  the  result  of 
a  synthesis  of  these  ideas,  some  aspects  of 
the   Christian   doctrine   of   life. 


329 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


This  lecture  will  presuppose,  and  will  not 
attempt  to  repeat,  many  of  the  most  famihar 
of  the  moral  precepts  which  characterize  the 
Christian  view  of  conduct.  What  I  have  time 
to  dwell  upon  ought  so  to  be  selected  that 
essential  and  weighty  matters  come  to  our 
notice.  But  if  any  one  finds  that  my  sketch 
omits  much  that  is  also  of  importance  for 
the  Christian  definition  of  our  duty,  let  him 
know  from  the  start  that  I  aim  at  certain 
larger  connections,  and  endeavor  to  set  down 
here  genuinely  Christian  teachings  about 
duty,  but  that  I  do  not  hope  to  be  exhaustive 
in  any  part  of  my  report. 

Such  moral  teachings  of  Christianity  as  I 
can  restate  will  be  intimately  connected  with 
Christian  views  about  life  which  are  also  re- 
ligiously important.  I  shall  make  no  effort 
to  keep  asunder,  in  my  sketch,  the  ethical 
teachings  and  the  reUgious  interests  of  Chris- 
tianity.    In  our  study  of  the  ethical  value 

330 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    LIFE 

of  the  separate  ideas,  I  have  unhesitatingly 
passed    from  the  strictly  ethical   to   the  ob- 
viously  religious  aspect  of  these  ideas,  when- 
ever it  was  convenient  to  do  so,  always  post- 
poning, for  reasons  which  I  have  repeatedly 
explained,  the  technically  metaphysical  prob- 
lems which  both  the  ethical  and  the  rehgious 
sides  of  the  questions  at  issue  have  involved. 
You    can,    for    convenience,    sunder    your 
treatment,   both   of  ethical   and   of  religious 
problems,   from  your  technical  metaphysics. 
But  ethics  and  religion,  in  a  case  such  as  that 
of   Christianity,    can    indeed    be   contrasted; 
but  cannot  profitably  be  kept  apart  in  your 
exposition.     This,  I  suppose,  has  been  mani- 
fest at  each  stage  of  our  foregoing  discussion 
of  the  different  Christian  ideas.     It  will  be 
more  than  ever  manifest  in  the  present  por- 
trayal of  the  connected  whole  to  which  they 
belong. 

II 

What  is  essential  to  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life  can  be  brought  to  mind,  at  this  point, 
more  readily  than  in  any  other  way  known  to 

331 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

me,  by  a  very  brief  contrast  between  some 
features  of  the  Christian  rehgion,  and  the 
corresponding  features  of  the  greatest  his- 
torical rival  of  Christianity,  namely.  Buddh- 
ism. Of  the  latter  rehgion  I  know,  hke 
most  philosophical  students  of  my  type  of 
training,  only  very  superficially,  and  mainly 
at  second  hand.  What  I  mention  regarding 
that  matter  has  therefore  merely  the  value  of 
emphasizing  the  contrast  to  which  I  am  to 
direct  attention,  and  of  thus  illustrating  the 
position  of  Christianity. 

Let  me  begin  my  sketch  by  pointing  out 
some  features  wherein  these  two  great  reh- 
gions  agree. 

Both  Christianity  and  Buddhism  are  prod- 
ucts of  long  and  vast  processes  of  rehgious 
evolution.  Both  of  them  originally  appealed 
to  mature  and  complex  civihzations.  Yet 
both  of  them  intended  that  their  appeal 
should,  in  the  end,  be  made  to  all  mankind. 
Both  of  them  dehberately  transcended  the 
limits  of  caste,  of  rank,  of  nation,  and  of  race, 
^nd  undertook  to  carry  their  message  to  all 

332 


CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  Both  showed, 
as  missionary  rehgions,  an  immense  power  of 
assimilation.  Both  freely  used,  so  far  as  they 
could  do  so  without  sacrificing  essentials,  the 
rehgious  ideas  which  they  found  present  in 
the  various  lands  that  their  missionaries 
reached ;  and,  hke  Paul,  both  of  them  became 
all  things  to  all  men,  if  haply  they  might 
thereby  win  any  man  to  the  faith  that  they 
thought  to  be  saving. 

Both  were  redemptive  rehgions,  which  con- 
demned both  the  mind  and  the  sins  of  the  ' 
natural  man;  and  taught  salvation  through 
a  transformation  of  the  innermost  being  of  this 
natural  man.  Each  developed  a  great  variety 
of  sects  and  of  forms  of  social  life.  Each 
made  use  of  rehgious  orders  as  a  means  of 
separating  those  who,  while  desirous  of  salva- 
tion, were  able,  in  their  present  existence,  to 
five  only  in  a  close  contact  with  the  world, 
from  those  who  could  aim  directly  at  the  high- 
est grades  of  perfection. 

Each  of  these  two  religions  attempts,  by  a 
frank    exposure    of   the   centrally    important 

333 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

facts  of  our  life,  to  Vjanish  the  illusions  which 
bind  us  fast  to  earth,  and,  as  they  both  main- 
tain, to  destruction.  Each  is  therefore,  in  its 
own  way,  austere  and  unsparing  in  the  speech 
which  it  addresses  to  the  natural  man.  Each 
shuns  mere  popularity,  and  is  transparently 
honest  in  its  estimate  of  the  vanities  of  the 
world.  Each  aims  at  the  heart  of  our  defects. 
Each  says:  "What  makes  your  Hfe  a  wreck 
and  a  failure,  is  that  your  very  essence  as  a 
human  self  is,  in  advance  of  the  saving  process, 
a  necessary  source  of  woe  and  wrong.  /  Each 
of  the  two  rehgions  insists  upon  the  inmost 
life  of  the  heart  as  the  source  whence  proceeds 
all  that  is  evil,  and  whence  may  proceed  all 
that  can  become  good  about  man.-  Each 
rejects  the  merely  outward  show  of  bur  deeds 
as  a  means  for  determining  whether  we  are 
righteous  or  not.  Each  demands  absolute 
personal  sincerity  from  its  followers.  Each 
blesses  the  pure  in  heart,  requires  strict  self- 
control,  and  makes  an  inner  concentration  of 
mind  upon  the  good  end  an  essential  feature 
of  piety.     Each   preaches   kindhness   toward 

334 


■.fMMA.^^         HJM  4««.lf  <  «tf  f 


:-iLif 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
all  mankind,  including  our  enemies.  Each 
condemns  cruelty  and  malice.  Each,  in  fact, 
permits  no  human  enmities.  Each  is  a  re- 
ligion  that  exalts  those  who,  in  the  world's 
eyes,  are  weak. 

And  not  only  in  these  more  distinctly  ethi- 
cal ideas  do  the  two  religions  agree.  Each  of 
them  has  its  own  world  of  spiritual  exalta- 
tion; its  realm  that  is  not  only  moral,  but 
deeply  religious ;  its  home-land  of  deliverance, 
where  the  soul  that  is  saved  finds  rest  in 
communion  with  a  peace  that  the  world  can 
neither  give  nor  take  away. 

In  these  very  important  respects,  therefore, 
the  distinctly  religious  features  of  the  two 
faiths  are  intimately  related.  In  case  of  each 
of  the  two  religions,  but  in  the  case  of  Buddh- 
ism rather  more  than  in  the  case  of  Christi- 
amty,  it  is  possible,  and  in  fact  just  and  requi- 
site, to  distinguish  its  ideas  of  the  nature  and 
the  means  and  the  realm  of  salvation  from 
the  metaphysical  opinions  which  a  more  or 
less  learned  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
faith  almost  inevitably  uses. 

335 


£l^  Jlr  VV*-V  .1 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Buddhism    has    its    ideas    of    the    moral 
order  of  the  universe,  of  Nirvana,  and  of  the 
Buddhas,  —  the  beings  who  attain  supreme 
enhghtenment,  —  and  who  thereby  save  the 
world.     These  ideas  invite  metaphysical  spec- 
ulation,   and    furnish    motives    that    tended 
towards  the  building  up  of  a  theology,  and 
that,  in  the  end,  produced  a  theology.     But 
each  of  these  religious  ideas,  in  the  case  of 
Buddhism,  can  be  defined  without  defining 
either  a  metaphysical  or  a  theological  system. 
The  original  teaching  of  Gotama  Buddha  re- 
jected all  metaphysical  speculation,  and  in- 
sisted solely  upon  the  ethical  foundations  of 
the  doctrine,  and  upon  those  distinctly  reU- 
gious,  but  non-metaphysical,  views  of  salva- 
tion, and  of  the  higher  spiritual  hfe,  which 
Buddha    preferred    to    depict    in    parables, 
rather    than    to    render    needlessly    abstruse 
through  discussions  such  as,  in  his  opinion, 
did  not  tend  to  edification. 

The  common  ethical  and  reUgious  features 
of  Christianity  and  Buddhism  are  thus  both 
many  and  impressive.     Some  of  the  greatest 

336 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

We  questions  are  faced  by  both  religions,  and, 
in  the  respects  which  I  have  now  pointed  out, 
are  answered  in  substantially  the  same  way.' 
Moreover,  in  several  of  the  ethical  and  reli- 
gious ideas  in  which  these  two  religions  agree 
with  each  other,  they  do  not  closely  agree  with 
any  other  religion.     So  far  as  I  can  venture 
to  judge,   no  other  religions  that  have  at- 
tempted to  appeal  to  the  deepest  and  most  uni- 
versal interests  of  mankind  have  been  so  free 
as  both  Buddhism  and  Christianity  are  from 
bondage  to  national,  to  racial,  and  to  worldly 
antagonisms  and  prejudices.    iNo  others  have 
made  so  central,  as  they  both  have  done,  the 
conception  of  a  personal  saviour  of  mankind, 
whose  dignity  depends  both  upon  the  moral 
merits  of  his  teaching  and  of   his  hfe,  and 
upon  the  rehgious  significance  of  the  spiritual 
level  to  which  he  led  the  way,  thus  moulding 
both  the  thoughts  and  the  hves  of  his  fol- 
lowers. 

When  we  add  to  all  these  parallels  the  fact 
that  each  of  these  religions  had  an  historical 
founder,  whose  hfe  later  came  to  be  the  object 
•  337 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of    many    legendary    reports;     and   that  the 
legends,  in  each  case,  were  so  framed  by  the 
rehgious  imagination  of  the  early  followers  of 
the   faith    in    question    that    they   include    a 
symbolism,    whereby   a   portion   of   the   true 
meaning   of   each   faith   is   expressed   in   the 
stories  about  the  founder,  —  when,  I  say,  we 
add  this  fact  to  all  the  others,  we  get  some  hint 
of  the  very  genuine  community  of  spirit  which 
belongs   to   these   two   great  world  rehgions. 
That  the  imaginative   Buddha-legends  show 
an  unrestrained  and  often  helpless  disposition 
to  adorn  the  rehgion  with  an  edifying  body 
of  miraculous  tales,   while  the  relative  self- 
restraint   of   the   early    Christian  Church  in 
holding  in  check,  as  much  as  it  did,  its  vig- 
orous   myth-making    tendencies,   remains,  in 
many    respects,    a    permanent    marvel,  —  all 
this     constitutes     a    very     notable     contrast 
between  the  two  faiths.     But  this  is,  in  part, 
a  contrast  between  the  two  civiHzations  (so 
remote,    in    many    ways,    from    each    other) 
whose  development  lay  at  the  basis  of  the 
two    rehgions.       Buddhism    was    more    sur- 

338 


CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

rounded  by  an  atmosphere  of  magic  than  the 
Christian  Church  ever  was.  Yet  in  those 
essentials  which  I  have  just  reported,  the 
agreements  and  analogies  between  the  two 
faiths  are  both  close  and  momentous.  So  far 
the  two  seem  to  be  genuine  co-workers  in  the 
same  vast  task  of  the  ages,  —  the  salvation  of 
man,  through  the  transformation  of  a  natural 
life  into  a  Hfe  whose  dwelhng-place  lies  be- 
yond human  woe  and  sin. 

Ill 

Wherein,  then,  hes  the  most  essential  con- 
trast  between  the  Christian  and  the  Buddh- 
istic doctrines  of  hfe  ?     This  contrast,  when 
it  once  comes  to  light,  is,  to  my  mind,  far 
more   impressive    than    are    the    agreements. 
It   has   often   been   discussed.     What   I   say 
about  it  is  the  word  of  one  who  cannot  decide 
problems  of  the  comparative  history  of  reli- 
gion.    But  I  must  venture  my  own  statement 
at  this  point,  despite  my  comparative  igno- 
rance of  Buddhism ;    because  the  contrast  in 
question  seems  to  me  so  illuminating  for  one 

339 


^ 


THE    PROBLEM     OF  CHRISTIANITY 

who  wishes  clearly  to  grasp  the  essence  of 
Christianity. 

The  most  famihar  way  of  stating  this  con- 
trast is  to  say  that  Buddhism  is  pessimistic, 
while  Christianity  is  a  rehgion  of  hope.     This 
is,  in  part,  true ;  but  it  is  not  very  enhghten- 
ing,  unless  the  spirit  of  Christian  hopefulness 
is  more  fully  explained,  and  unless  the  Buddh- 
istic pessimism   is   quite   justly   appreciated. 
Both  rehgions  hope  for  salvation;    and,  for 
each  of  them,  salvation  means  an  overcoming 
of  the  world.   'Each  deplores  humanity  as  it  is, 
and  means  to  transform  us.     The  contrast  is, 
therefore,  hardly  to  be  defined  as  a  contrast 
of  hope  with  despair.     For  each  undertakes 
to  overcome  the  world,  and  assures  us  that  we 
can  be  transformed.     And  each  regards  our 
natural  state  as  one  worthy  of  despair,  were 
not  the  way  of  salvation  opened. 

Nearer  to  the  whole  truth  seems  to  be  that 
frequently  repeated  statement  of  the  matter 
which  insists  upon  the  creative  attitude  which 
Christianity  requires  the  will  to  take,  as  against 
the  quietism  of  Buddha.     Buddhism,  as  we 

340 


tijt''^'  !^'"3;",'  S.'jJjtVi^. 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

mentioned  in  a  former  lecture,  has  as  its  goal 
a  certain  passionless  contemplation,  in  which 
the  distinction  of  one  individual  from  another 
is  of  no  import,  so  that  the  self,  as  this  self, 
vanishes.  Christianity  conceives  love  as  posi- 
tively active,  and  dwells  upon  a  hope  of  im- 
mortality. 

Nevertheless,  the  concept  of  beatitude,  as 
the   Christian   thought   of   the  Middle  Ages 
formulated   that   concept,   sets   the   contem- 
plative hfe  nearer  the  goal  than  the  active 
Hfe,  even  when  the  active  hfe  is  one  of  charity. 
Hence,   in   their   more   mystical   moods   and 
expressions,  the  two  rehgions  are,  once  more, 
much  more  largely  in  agreement  than  our  own 
very  natural  partisanship,  determined  by  our 
Christian  traditions,  tends  to  make  us  admit. 
It  is  also  true  that  Buddhism  aims  at  the 
extinction  of  the  individual  self ;   while  Chris- 
tianity assigns  to  the  human  individual  an 
infinite  worth.     And  this  is  indeed  a  vastly 
important  difference.      Yet  this  very  impor- 
tance remains  unexplained,  and  a  mere  for- 
mula, until  you  see  what  it  is  about  the  human 

341 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


individual  which  constitutes,  for  the  Christian 
view,  his  importance.  One  may  answer,  in  sim- 
ple terms,  that,  according  to  the  teachings  of 
Jesus,  the  individual  is  infinitely  important,  be- 
cause the  Father  loves  him ;  while  Buddhism, 
in  its  original  Southern  form,  has  nothing  to 
offer  that  is  equivalent  to  this  love  of  God  for 
the  individual  man.  Yet  the  further  question 
has  to  be  faced  :  Why  and  for  what  end  does 
the  God  of  Christianity  love  the  individual  .^ 
And  it  is  here,  at  last,  that  you  come  face  to 
face  with  the  deepest  contrast. 

For  God's  love  towards  the  individual  is, 
from  the  Christian  point  of  view,  a  love  for  one 
whose  destiny  it  is  to  be  a  member  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is 
essentially  a  community.  And  the  idea  of 
this  community,  as  the  founder  in  parables 
prophetically  taught  that  idea,  developed  into 
the  conception  which  the  Christian  Church 
formed  of  its  own  mission;  and  through  all 
changes,  and  despite  all  human  failures,  this 
conception  remains  a  sovereign  treasure  of 
the  Christian  world. 

342 


■^>-s^i:i^iMii^M?:s^^i^ 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 


IV 

The  Individual  and  the  Community :  this, 
if    I    may    so    express    a    perfectly    human 
antithesis  in  religious  and  deliberately  sym- 
bolic    speech,  — this    pair   of    terms    and    of 
ideas  is,  so  to  speak,  the  sacred  pair,  to  whose 
exposition  and  to  whose  practical  application 
the  whole  Christian  doctrine  of  life  is  due. 
This  pair  it  is  which,  in  the  first  place,  enables 
Christianity   to   tell   the   individual   why,   in 
his  natural  isolation  and  narrowness,  he  is 
essentially  defective,  —  is  inevitably  a  failure, 
is  doomed,  and  must  be  transformed.     This, 
if  you  choose,  is  the  root  and  core  of  man's 
original  sin,  —  namely,  the  very  form  of  his 
being  as  a  morally  detached  individual.     This 
is  the  bondage  of  his  flesh ;  this  is  the  soul 
of  his  corruption ;  this  is  his  alienation  from 
true  life;  this  fact,  namely,  that  by  nature, 
as  a  social  animal,  he  is  an  individual  who, 
though    fast   bound    by   ties   which  no  man 
can    rend,    to    the    community    wherein     he 
chances  to  be  born  or  trained,  nevertheless, 

343 


T^E    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

until  the  true  love  of  a  community,  and  until 
the  beloved  community  itself  appear  in  his 
life,  is  a  stranger  in  his  father's  house, 
a  hater  of  his  only  chance  of  salvation,  a 
worldling,  and  a  worker  of  evil  deeds,  a 
miserable  source  of  misery.  This  is  why,  for 
Christianity,  the  salvation  of  man  means  the 
destruction  of  his  natural  self,  —  the  sacrifice 
of  what  his  flesh  holds  dearest,  —the  utter 
transformation  of  the  primal  core  of  the  social 
self.  I  say  :  it  is  the  merely  natural  relation 
of  the  individual  to  the  community  which,  for 
Christianity,  explains  all  this.  Here  are  the 
two  levels  of  human  existence.  The  individ- 
ual, born  on  his  own  level,  is  naturally  doomed 
to  hatred  for  what  belongs  to  the  other  level. 
Yet  there,  on  that  higher  level,  his  only 
salvation  awaits  him. 

Buddhism  fully  knows,  and  truly  teaches, 
where  the  root  of  bitterness  is  to  be  found,  — 
not  in  the  outward  deed,  but  in  the  inmost 
heart  of  the  individual  self.  But  what,  so 
far  as  I  know,  the  original  Southern  Buddhism 
never  clearly  made  a  positive  part  of  its  own 

344 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

plan  of  the  salvation  of  mankind,  is  a  trans- 
formation  of  the  self,  not  through  the  mere 
destruction  of  the  narrow  and  corrupt  flesh 
which  ahenates  it  from  the  true  hfe,  but  by 
the  simple  and  yet  intensely  positive  devotion 
of  the  self  to  a  new  task,  —  to  its  creative  office 
as  a  loyal  member  of  a  beloved  community. 
Early   Buddhism  never,  so  far  as   I   know, 
clearly  defined  its  ideal  of  the  beloved  com- 
munity in  terms  which  make  that  community, 
viewed  simply  as  an  ideal,  one  conscious  unity 
of  the  business,  of  the  eager  hopes,  and  of  the 
patiently  ingenious  and  endlessly  constructive 
love,  of  all  mankind. 

The  ideal  Christian  community  is  one  in 
which  compassion  is  a  mere  incident  in  the 
realization   of    the    new    hfe,    not    only    of 
brotherly   concord,    but   also  of   an  intermi- 
nably positive  creation  of  new  social  values, 
all  of  which  exist  for  many  souls  in  one  spirit. 
The  ideal   Christian  community  of  all  man- 
kind is   to  be  as  intimate  in  its  enthusiasm 
of  service   as    the   daily    fife   of   a    Pauline 
church  was  intended  by  the  apostle  to  be,  — 

345 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

and  as  novel  in  its  inventions  of  new  arts  of 
common  living  as  the  gifts  of  the  spirit  in  the 
early  Christian  Church  were  believed  to  be 
novel.  The  ideal  Christian  community  is  to 
be  the  community  of  all  mankind,  —  as  com- 
pletely united  in  its  inner  hfe  as  one  con- 
scious self  could  conceivably  become,  and  as 
destructive  of  the  natural  hostilities  and  of  the 
narrow  passions  which  estrange  individual 
men,  as  it  is  skilful  in  winning  from  the  in- 
finite realm  of  bare  possibilities  concrete  arts 
of  control  over  nature  and  of  joy  in  its  own 
riches  of  grace.  This  free  and  faithful  com- 
munity of  all  mankind,  wherein  the  individuals 
should  indeed  die  to  their  own  natural  hfe, 
but  should  also  enjoy  a  newness  of  positive 
Hfe,  —  this  community  never  became,  so  far 
as  I  can  learn,  a  conscious  ideal  for  early 
Buddhism. 

How  far  the  Japanese  religion  of  loyalty, 
in  its  later  forms  of  modified  Buddhism,  or 
in  its  other  phases,  has  approached,  or  will 
hereafter  approach,  to  an  independent  and 
original  definition  of  the  positive  and  con- 

346 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
structive  ideal  of  a  conscious  and  universal 
human  community  which  is  here  in  question, 
I  am  quite  unable  to  judge.     The  Japanese 
Buddhist  sects  well  know  what  salvation  by 
grace  is.     They  well  conceive  and  accept  the 
doctrine  of  the  incarnation  of  the  divine  being 
in  a  supernatural  individual  man ;    and  are 
certainly  universal   in   their  general   concep- 
tions of  some   sort   of   human   brotherhood. 
And  they  have  reached  these  religious  ideas 
quite  apart  from  any  dependence  upon  Chris- 
tianity. 

But  what  I  miss  in  their  religious  concep- 
tions, so  far  as  I  have  read  reports  of  these 
conceptions,  is  such  a  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem  of  human   hfe   in   terms  of   loyalty,  as 
at  once  demands  the  raising  of  the  human  self 
from  the  level  of  its  natural  narrowness,  to 
the  level  of  a  complete  and  conscious  personal 
membership   in   a   beloved   community,   and 
at  the  same  time  defines  the  ideal  community 
to  whose  level  and  in  whose  spirit  we  are  to 
live,  as  the  community  of  all  mankind,  and 
as  one  endlessly  creative  and  conscious  human 

347 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

spirit,  whose  life  is  to  be  lived  upon  its  own 
level,  and  of  whose  dominion  there  is  to  be, 
in  ideal  and  in  meaning,  no  end. 

The  familiar  article  in  the  Christian  creed 
which  expresses  this  perfectly  concrete  and 
practical    and   also   religious   ideal,    and    ex- 
presses it  in  terms  whose  ethical  and  whose 
rehgious    value    you    can    test    by    personal 
and  social  experience,  whatever  may  be  your 
own  definition  of  the  dogmas  of  the  Church, 
and    whatever    your    metaphysical    opinions 
may  be,  and  whatever  form  of  the  visible  or 
invisible  Church  chances  best  to  seem  to  meet 
this  your  interpretation,  —  the  familiar  arti- 
cle of  the  Christian  creed  which  expresses,  I 
say,  this  ideal,  just  as  an  ideal,  uses  the  words : 
**I  beheve  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  holy  Catho- 
lic Church,  the  communion  of  saints."     My 
earher  exposition  of  this  idea  sadly  failed  if 
I  did  not  show  you  how  one  can  understand 
and  accept  the  spirit  of  this  article  of  the 
creed,  without  accepting  the  dogmas  or  the 
obedience  or  the  practice  of  any  one  form  of 
the  visible  Christian  Church.     But  it  was  this 

348 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

which  I  had  in  mind  when  I  said,  in  our 
opening  lecture,  that  Christianity  has  fur- 
nished mankind  with  its  most  impressive  and 
inspiring  vision  of  the  home-land  of  the 
spirit. 


Ethically  speaking,  the  counsels  which  this 
Christian  idea  of  the  community  implies,  in- 
elude  all  the  familiar  maxims  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  and  all  the  lessons  of  the  par- 
ables, but  tend  to  give  to  them  such  sorts  of 
development  as  the  ideals  of  the  early  Church, 
in  Pauhne  and  post-Pauhne  times,  gradually 
gave  to  them.     Always  what  I  have  called  the 
diflFerence  between  the  two  levels  of  our  hu- 
man existence  must  be  borne  in  mind,  if  the 
interpretation  of  Christian  love  is  to  become  as 
concrete  as  Paul  made  it  in  his  epistles,  and 
as  concrete  as  later  ages  have  attempted  to 
keep  it,  even  while  developing  its  meaning. 
You  love  your  neighbor,  first,  because  God 
loves  him.     Yes,  but  how  and  why  does  God 
love  him  ?     Because  God  loves  the  Kingdom 

349 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  Heaven ;  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  a 
perfectly  live  unity  of  individual  men  joined 
in  one  divine  chorus  —  an  unity  of  men  who, 
except  through  their  attachment  to  this  life 
which  exists  on  the  level  of  the  beloved  com- 
munity of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  would  be 
miserable  breeders  of  woe,  and  would  be  lost 
souls.  Let  your  love  for  them  be  a  love  for 
your  fellow-members  in  this  Kingdom  of 
Heaven. 

Yes ;  but  this  neighbor  is  your  enemy ; 
or  he  belongs  to  the  wrong  tribe  or  caste  or 
sect.  Do  not  consider  these  unhappy  facts 
as  having  any  bearing  on  your  love  for  him. 
For  the  ethical  side  of  the  doctrine  of  life 
concerns  not  what  you  find,  but  what  you  are 
to  create.  Now  God  means  this  man  to  be- 
come a  member  of  the  community  which 
constitutes  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven;  and 
God  loves  this  man  accordingly.  View  him, 
then,  as  the  soldier  views  the  comrade  who 
serves  the  same  flag  with  himself,  and  who 
dies  for  the  same  cause.  In  the  Kingdom  you, 
and  your  enemy,  and  yonder  stranger,  are  one. 

350 


CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE   OF  LIFE 

for  the  Kingdom  is  the  community  of  God's 
beloved. 

As  for  the  way  in  which  you  are  to  love 
make  that  way  of  loving,  to  your  own  mind,' 
more  alive,  by  recalling  the  meaning  of  your 
own  dearest  friendships.     Think  of  the  chsest 
umty  of  human  souls  that  you  know.     Then 
conceive  of  the  Kingdom  in  terms  of  such  love. 
When  friends  really  join  hands  and   hearts 
and  lives,  it  is  not  the  mere  collection  of  sun- 
dered  organisms  and  of  divided  feehngs  and 
will  that  these  friends  view  as  their  hfe.     Their 
life,  as  friends,  is  the  unity  which,  while  above 
their  own  level,  wins  them  to  itself  and  gives 
them  meaning.     This  unity  is  the  vine.     They 
are  the  branches. 

Now  of  such  unity  is  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  See,  then,  in  every  man  the  branch 
of  such  a  vine,  -  the  outflowing  of  such  a 
purpose,  -  the  beloved  of  such  a  spirit,  the 
mcarnation  of  such  a  divine  concern  for  many 
m  one.  And  then  your  Christian  love  will 
be  much  more  than  mere  pity,  -  will  be 
greater  than  any  amiable  sympathy  with  the 

351 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

longings  of  those  poor  creatures  of  flesh  could, 
of  itself,  become.  Your  love  will  then  become 
the  Charity  that  never  faileth.  For  its  object 
is  the  Beloved  Community,  and  the  individual 
as,  ideally,  a  member  of  that  community. 

Is  such  a  regard  for  individuals  too  imper- 
sonal to  meet  the  spirit  of  the  parables  ?  No, 
—  it  does  not  destroy,  it  fulfils,  as  the  early 
Christian  Church,  in  ideal,  fulfilled  the  spirit 
of  the  parables.  Paul  spoke  thus,  and  thereby 
made  Christian   love  more  rather   than   less 

personal. 

If  by  person  you  merely  mean  the  morally 
detached  individual  man,  then  the  commu- 
nity,—  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  is  indeed 
superpersonal.  If,  by  person,  you  mean  a 
live  unity  of  knowledge  and  of  will,  of  love  and 
of  deed,  —  then  the  community  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  is  a  person  on  a  higher  level 
than  is  the  level  of  any  human  individual; 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  once  within 
you,  and  above  you,  —  a  human  hfe,  and  yet 
a  hfe  whose  tabernacles  are  built  upon  a 
Mount   of   Transfiguration. 

352 


.-s:-  ^=<s;^vfeiMt- fflS; 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
Reconsider  familiar  parables  in  the  light 
of  such  an  interpretation,  -  an  interpreta- 
tion as  old  and  familiar  a^  it  is  persistently 
Ignored  or  misunderstood.  That,  I  insist, 
is  a  useful  way  of  restating  the  Christian 
moral  doctrine  of  life. 

Over  what  does  the  Father  in  the  parable 
of  the  Prodigal  Son  rejoice ."    Over  the  mere 
delight  that  his  son's  presence  now  gives  him, 
and  over  the  feasting  and  the  merriment  that 
his  own  forgiving  power  supplies  to  the  re- 
pentant outcast  ?    No,  the  Father  has  won 
agam,  not  merely  his  son  as  a  hungry  creature 
who  can  repent  and  be  fed.     The  Father  has 
won  again  the  unbroken  community  of  his 
family.     It  is  the  Father's  house  that  rejoices. 
It  IS  this  community  which  makes  meriy; 
and  the  father  is,  for  the  moment,  simply  the' 
incarnation  of  the  spirit  of  this  community. 

JVhy  is  there  more  joy  in  heaven  over  one 
sinner  that  repenteth  than  over  ninety  and  nine 
just  persons .'  Why  is  the  lost  sheep  sought 
in  the  wilderness.?  Because  the  individual 
soul  has  its  infinite  meaning  in  and  through 


2a 


3S3 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  unity  of  the  Kingdom.  The  one  lost 
sheep,  found  again,  —  or  the  one  repentant 
sinner,  —  symboHzes  the  restoration  of  the 
unity  of  this  community,  as  the  keystone 
stands  for  the  sense  of  the  whole  arch,  as 
the  flag  symboHzes  the  country. 

And  ivhy,  in  the  parable  of  the  judgment, 
does  the  judge  of  all  the  earth  identify  him- 
self with  "the  least  of  these  my  brethren,"  — 
with  the  stranger,  with  the  sick,  with  the 
captive  ?  Because  the  judge  of  all  the  earth 
is  expUcitly  the  spirit  of  the  universal  com- 
munity, who  speaks  in  the  name  of  all  who  are 
one  in  the  hght  and  in  the  hfe  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven. 

VI 

These  things  remind  us  how  ill  those  inter- 
pret the  teachings  of  the  Master  who  see  in 
them  a  merely  amiable  fondness  for  what 
any  morally  detached  individual  happens  to 
love  or  to  suffer  or  seem.  It  is  the  ideal  one- 
ness of  the  life  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
which  glorifies  and  renders  significant  every 

354 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

human  individual  who  loves  the  Kingdom,  or 
whom  God  views  as  such  a  lover.  And  be- 
cause Paul  had  before  him  the  Hfe  of  the 
churches,  while  the  Master  left  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  for  the  future  to  reveal,  Paul's 
account  of  Christian  morals  is  an  enrichment, 
and  a  further  fulfilment  of  what  the  parables 
began  to  tell,  and  left  to  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  to  make  manifest. 

In  such  wise,  then,  are  the  familiar  precepts 
to  be  interpreted,  if  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
the  moral  Hfe  is  to  be  what  it  was  intended 
to  be,  —  not  a  body  of  maxims  and  of  illus- 
trations, but  a  Hving  and  growing  expression 
of  the  Hfe-spirit  of  Christianity. 

For  the  doctrine,  if  thus  interpreted,  points 
you  not  only  backwards  to  the  reported  words 
of  the  Master,  but  endlessly  forwards  into 
the  region  where  humanity,  as  it  continues 
through  the  coming  ages,  must,  with  an  un- 
wearied patience,  labor  and  experiment,  and 
invent  and  create.  The  true  moral  code  of 
Christianity  has  always  been  and  will  remain 
fluent  as  weH  as  decisive.     Only  so   could   it 

355 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

express  the  Master's  true  spirit.  It  therefore 
must  not  view  either  the  parables  or  the 
sayings  as  a  storehouse  of  maxims,  or  even 
as  a  treasury  of  individual  examples  and  of 
personal  expressions  of  the  Master's  mind, 
expressions  such  that  these  maxims,  these 
examples,  and  these  personal  sayings  of  the 
Master  can  never  be  surpassed  in  their  ethical 
teachings.  The  doctrine  of  the  sayings  and  of 
the  parables  actually  cries  out  for  reinterpre- 
tation,  for  the  creation  of  a  novel  life.  That 
seems  to  me  precisely  what  the  founder  him- 
self intended.  The  early  apostoUc  Churches 
fulfilled  the  Master's  teaching  by  surpassing 
it,  and  were  filled  with  the  spirit  of  their 
Master  just  because  they  did  so.  This,  to 
my  mind,  is  a  central  lesson  of  the  early  devel- 
opment of  Christianity. 

All  morality,  namely,  is,  from  this  point 
of  view,  to  be  judged  by  the  standards  of  the 
Beloved  Community,  of  the  ideal  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  Concretely  stated,  this  means  that 
you  are  to  test  every  course  of  action  not  by 
the  question :    What  can  we  find  in  the  par- 

356 


^sat. 


'^ihfhh^sL 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

ables  or  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  which 
seems  to  us  more  or  less  directly  to  bear  upon 
this  special  matter.?  The  central  doctrine 
of  the  Master  was  :  "So  act  that  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  may  come."  This  means:  So 
act  as  to  help,  however  you  can,  and  when- 
ever you  can,  towards  making  mankind  one 
loving  brotherhood,  whose  love  is  not  a  mere 
affection  for  morally  detached  individuals, 
but  a  love  of  the  unity  of  its  own  life  upon  its 
own  divine  level,  and  a  love  of  individuals 
in  so  far  as  they  can  be  raised  to  communion 
with  this  spiritual  community  itself. 

VII 

Now  if  we  speak  in  purely  human,  and  still 
postpone  any  speaking  in  metaphysical,  terms, 
the  community  of  all  mankind  is  an  ideal. 
Just  now,  just  in  this  year  or  on  this  day,  there 
exists  no  human  community  that  is  adequately 
conscious  of  its  own  unity,  adequately  crea- 
tive of  what  it  ought  to  create,  adequately 
representative,  on  its  own  level,  of  the  real 
and  human  communion  of  the  spirit.     Our 

357 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


best  communities  of  to-day  either  take  ac- 
count of  caste  or  of  nation  or  of  race,  as  all 
the  political  communities  do,  or  else,  when 
deliberately  aiming  at  universality  and  at 
religious  unity,  they  exclude  one  another; 
and  are  therefore  not,  in  an  ideal  sense  and 
degree,  beloved  communities.  Two  things,  if 
no  other,  stand  between  even  the  best  of  the 
churches  as  they  are,  —  between  them,  I  say, 
and  the  attainment  of  the  goal  of  the  truly 
beloved  and  the  universal  human  community. 

The  one  thing  is  their  sectarian  character, 
—  excluding,  as  they  do,  the  one  the  other. 
The  other  thing  is  their  official  organization, 
which  cultivates,  in  each  of  the  more  highly 
developed  communities  of  this  type,  a  respect 
for  the  law  at  precisely  the  expense  of  that 
which  Paul  experienced  in  case  of  the  legal 
aspect  of  the  Judaism  in  which  he  was 
trained. 

No,  —  the  universal  and  beloved  commu- 
nity is  still  hidden  from  our  imperfect  hu- 
man view,  and  will  remain  so,  how  long  we 
know  not. 

358 


:  lU-.-t. 


CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

Nevertheless,  the  principle  of  principles  in 
all  Christian  morals  remains  this:  —  "Since 
you  cannot  find  the  universal  and  beloved 
community,  — cr^a^^  it."  And  this  again,  ap- 
plied to  the  concrete  art  of  living,  means : 
Do  whatever  you  can  to  take  a  step  towards 
it,  or  to  assist  anybody,  —  your  brother,  your 
friend,  your  neighbor,  your  country,  —  man- 
kind, —  to  take  steps  towards  the  organiza- 
tion of  that  coming  community. 

That,  I  say,  is  the  vprinciple  of  principles 
for    Christian    morals.     But,    for    that    very 
reason,   there  can   be  no   code  of   Christian 
morals,  nor  any  one  set  of  personal  examples, 
or  of  sayings,  or  of  parables,  or  of  other  nar- 
ratives, which  will  do  more  than  to  arouse  us 
to  create  something  new  on  our  way  towards 
the  goal.     Christian  morality  will  not,  either 
suddenly   or   gradually,    conquer   the    world. 
But,   if   Christianity,    conceived    in   its   true 
spirit,  retains  its  hold  upon  mankind,  human- 
ity will  go  on  creating  new  forms  of  Christian 
morality;    whose  only  persistent  feature  will 
be  that  they  intend  to  aid  men  to  make  their 

359 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

personal,  their  friendly,  their  social,  their 
political,  their  religious  orders  and  organiza- 
tions such  that  mankind  comes  more  and  more 
to  resemble  the  ideal,  the  beloved,  the  univer- 
sal community.  And  the  ethical  aspect  of 
the  creed  of  the  Christian  world  always  will 
include  this  article  :  "I  believe  in  the  beloved 
community  and  in  the  spirit  which  makes  it 
beloved,  and  in  the  communion  of  all  who  are, 
in  will  and  in  deed,  its  members.  I  see  no 
such  community  as  yet;  but  none  the  less 
my  rule  of  life  is :  Act  so  as  to  hasten  its 
coming." 

Now  such  an  ethical  creed  is  not  a  vague 
humanitarian  enthusiasm.  For  it  simply  re- 
quires that  we  work  with  whatever  concrete 
human  materials  we  have  for  creating  both  the 
organization  of  communities  and  the  love  for 
them.  The  work  is  without  any  human  con- 
clusion that  we  can  foresee.  But  it  can  be 
made  always  definite,  simply  by  resoluteness, 
in  union  with  devotion.  That  is  the  type  of 
work  which  always  has  been  characteristically 
Christian,  and  which  promises  to  remain  so. 

360 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

VIII 

The  Christian  idea  of  the  community  and  of 
its  relation  to  the  way  of  salvation  requires  for 
its  complete  appreciation  a  comparison  and 
synthesis  which  shall  also  include  the  idea  of 
Atonement. 

In  the  foregoing  lecture  we  endeavored  to 
set  the  religious  value  of  the  idea  of  atone- 
ment in  a   light   which   must   be,   for   many 
minds,  somewhat  novel ;  for  otherwise  the  idea 
of  atonement  would  not  have  been  so  long  and 
so  variously  rendered  more  mysterious  by  the 
technically  theological  treatment  which  has 
been  freely  devoted  to  it.     Nevertheless,  in 
its  deepest  spirit,  this  very  idea  of  atonement 
has  been   so  dear  to  the  religious  mind  of 
Christendom,  and  so  familiar  in  art,  in  worship, 
and  in  contemplation,  that  it  simply  ought 
not  to  appear  so  mysterious.     The  fate  of  the 
Christian  idea  of  atonement  has  been,  that 
what  Christian  piety  felt  to  be  the  head  of 
the  corner,  the  Christian  intellect  has  either 
rejected,  or  else,  even  in  trying  to  defend  the 

361 


THE    PKOBLExM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

atonement,  has  made  a  stone  of  stumbling, 
and  a  rock  of  offence. 

Between  the  idea  of  the  saving  community 
and  the  idea  of  atonement,  He  the  gravest  of 
Christian  ideas,  —  those  which  many  op- 
timists find  too  discouraging  to  face,  or  too 
austere  to  be  wholesome.  These  are:  the 
idea  of  sin,  the  idea  of  our  original  bondage  to 
sin,  and  the  idea  of  the  consequences  involved 
in  defining  sin  as  an  inner  voluntary  inclina- 
tion of  the  mind,  rather  than  as  an  outwardly 
manifest  evil  deed.  These  ideas  about  sin 
are  in  part  common,  as  we  have  said,  to  Chris- 
tianity and  to  Buddhism. 

But,  as  a  fact,  Christianity  has  so  developed 
these  very  ideas,  has  so  united  them  with  the 
!|  conception  of  the  grace  and  of  the  loyalty  which 
save  men  from  their  natural  sinfulness,  that 
just  these  conceptions  regarding  sin,  despite 
the  fact  that  Matthew  Arnold  thought  them 
too  likely  to  lead  to  a  brooding  wherein  "  many 
^  have  perished,"  are  ideas  such  that  their  right- 
ful definition  renders  Christianity  what,  for 
Paul,  it  became,  a  religion  of  spiritual  freedom. 

362 


N 


CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

In  our  studies  of  the  moral  burden  of  the 
individual,  and  of  the  realm  of  grace,  we  have 
seen  how  Christianity  is  a  religion  dependent, 
for  its  conception  of  original  sin,  upon  the 
most    characteristic    features    of    that    social 
cultivation  whereby  we  are  brought  to  a  high 
level    of    self-consciousness.      Early    Buddh- 
ism had,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  no  views  about 
the  nature  of  the  social  self  as  clear  as  those 
which  Paul   attained   and,   in   his  own   way, 
expressed.     But    this    very    doctrine    about 
'*the  law,"  —  that  is,  about  the  social  origin 
of  the  individual  self,  and  about  that  which 
"causes  sin  to  abound,"  is  a  theory  which  lies 
at  the  root  of  the  power  and  the  right  of  Chris- 
tianity to  say,  to  the  self  which  has  first  at- 
tained sinful  cultivation  in  self-will,  and  which 
has  then  been  transformed  by  "grace"  into  a 
loyal   self,   precisely   what   Paul   said   to   his 
converts:    '*A11  things  are  yours."     For  the 
doctrine  of  Paul  is,  that  the  escape  from  orig- 
inal sin  comes   through  the  acceptance  of  a 
service  which  is  perfect  freedom.     Out  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  sin  grows  the  Christian 

363 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 


teaching  about  the  freedom  of  the  faithful,  — 
a  teaching  which,  in  its  turn,  lies  at  the  basis 
of  some  of  the  most  important  developments 
of  the  modern  mind.  The  doctrine  of  sin 
need  not  lead,  then,  to  brooding.  It  may 
lead  to  spiritual  self-possession. 

The  doctrine  of  atonement  enables  us  to 
extend  the  Pauline  theory  of  salvation  by 
grace,  so  that  not  merely  our  originally  help- 
less bondage  to  the  results  of  our  social  culti- 
vation is  removed  by  the  grace  of  loyalty,  but 
the  saddest  of  all  the  forms  and  consequences 
of  wilful  sin,  —  namely,  the  deed  and  the 
result  of  conscious  disloyalty,  can  be  brought 
within  the  range  which  the  grace  of  the  will 
of  the  community  can  reach.  The  result  of 
our  discussion  in  the  last  lecture  has  been 
that,  if  we  are  right,  the  idea  of  atonement 
has  a  perfectly  indispensable  oflSce,  both  in 
the  ethical  and  in  the  religious  task  which  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  has  to  accomplish. 


^K- 


IX 


-^^ 


364 


Wi 


I 


Let  me  try  to  make  a  little  more  obvious 
the  interpretation  of  the  idea  of  atonement 
which,  in  the  last  lecture,  I  stated  in  outline. 
Let  me  use  for  this  purpose  another  illustra- 
tion. 

If  my  view  about  the  essence  of  the  idea  of 
atonement  is  correct,  the  first  instance  of  an 
extended  account  of  an  atoning  process  which 
the  Biblical  narratives  include,  would  be  the 
story  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren.  Let  us 
treat  this  story,  of  course,  as  obviously  a  little 
romance.  We  study  merely  its  value  as  an 
illustration.  The  brethren  sin  against  Joseph, 
and  against  their  father.  Their  deed  has 
some  of  the  characteristics,  not  of  mere  youth- 
ful folly,  but  of  maturely  wilful  treason. 
They  assail  not  merely  their  brother,  but  their 
father's  love  for  the  lost  son.  Their  crime  is 
carefully  considered,  and  is  deeply  treacherous. 
But  it  goes  still  farther.  The  treason  is  di- 
rected against  their  whole  family  community. 
Now,  in  the  long  run,  according  to  the  beauti- 

365 


-*?I.SJ,, 


1 
( 

I 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ful  talc,  Joseph  not  only  comforts  his  father, 
and  is  able  to  be  a  forgiving  benefactor  to  his 
brethren,  but  in  such  wise  atones  for  the  sin 
of  his  brethren  that  the  family  unity  is  re- 
stored.    Here,  then,  is  felt  to  be  a  genuine 
atonement.     Wherein  does  it  consist.^ 
Does  it  consist  in  this,  that  the  brethren 
^     have  earned  a  j^st^  penalty  which,  as  a  fact, 
I  they  never  adequately  suffer;    while  Joseph, 
guiltless  of  their  wilful  sin,  vicariously  suffers 
a  penalty  which  he  has  not  deserved  ?     Does 
the  atonement  further  consist  in  the  fact  that 
Joseph  is  able  and  willing  freely  to  offer,  for 
the  good  of  the  family,  both  the  merits  and 
the    providential    good    fortune    which    this 
vicarious  endurance  of  his  has  won  ? 

No,  —  this  "penal  satisfaction"  theory  of 
the  atoning  work  of  Joseph,  if  it  were  proposed 
as  an  example  of  a  doctrine  of  atonement, 
certainly  would  not  meet  that  sense  of  justice, 
and  of  the  fitness  of  things,  and  of  the  true 
value  of  Joseph's  life  and  deeds,  —  that  sense, 
I  say,  which  every  child  who  first  hears  the 
story    readily    feels,  —  without   in   the   least 

3G6 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

being   able    to    tell    what    he    feels.     If   one 
magnified  the  deed  of  Joseph  to  the  infinite, 
and  said,  as  many  have  said,  "Such  a  work 
as  Joseph  did  for  his  brethren,  even  such  a 
work,  in  his  own  divinely  supreme  way  and 
sense  Christ  did  for  sinful  man, "  —  would  that 
theory  of  the  matter  make  the  nature  of  atone- 
ment obvious.^       Would  a  vicarious   "penal 
satisfaction  "  help  one  to  understand  either  one 
or  the  other  of  these  instances  of  atonement  ? 
But  let  us  turn  from  such  now  generally 
discredited   "penal   satisfaction"  theories   to 
the  various  forms  of  modern  moral  theories. 
Let  us  say,  applying  our  explanations  once 
more  to  the  story  of  Joseph:    "God's  Prov- 
idence  sent   Joseph   into   captivity,   through 
the  sin  of  his  brethren,  but  still  under  a  divine 
decree.     Joseph  was  obedient  and  faithful  and 
pure-minded.     God     rewarded    his    patience 
and  fidelity  by  giving  him  power  in  Egypt. 
Then  Joseph,  having  suffered  and  triumphed, 
set  before  his  brethren   (not  without  a  due 
measure  of  gently  stern  rebuke  for  their  past 
misdeeds),  an  example  of  love  and  forgiveness 

367 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

SO  moving,  that  they  deeply  repented,  con- 
fessed their  sins,  and  loved  their  brother  as 
never  before.  That  was  Joseph's  atonement. 
And  that,  if  magnified  to  the  infinite,  gives 
one  a  view  of  the  sense  in  which  the  work  of 
Christ  atones  for  man's  sin."  Would  such 
an  account  help  us  to  understand  atonement, 
either  in  Joseph's  case,  or  in  the  other  ^ 

I  should  reply  that  such  moral  theories  of 
atonement,  applied  to  the  story  of  Joseph, 
miss  the  most  obvious  point  and  beauty  of 
the  tale;  and  also  show  us  in  no  wise  what 
genuine  atoning  work  the  Joseph  of  the  story 
did.  Would  the  mere  repentance,  or  the  re- 
newed love  of  the  treacherous  brethren  for 
Joseph,  or  their  wish  to  be  forgiven,  or  their 
confession  of  their  sin,  constitute  a  suflBcient 
ground  for  the  needed  reconciliation,  in  view  of 
their  offence  against  their  brother,  their  father, 
or  their  family  ?  If  this  was  all  the  atonement 
which  Joseph's  labors  supplied,  he  failed  in  his 
supposed  oflice.  Something  more  is  needed  to 
satisfy  even  the  child  who  enjoys  the  story. 

But  now,  let  us  become  as  little  children 

368 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

ourselves.     Let  us  take  the  tale  as  a  sensitive 
child  takes  it,  when  its  power  first  enters  his 
soul.     Let  us  simply  articulate  what  the  child 
feels.     Here,  according  to  the  tale,  is  a  pa- 
triarchal family  invaded  by  a  wilful  treason, 
wounded    to    the    core,    desolated,    broken. 
The  years  go  by.     The  individual   who  was 
most  directly  assailed  by  the  treason  is  guilt- 
less  himself   of   any   share   in   that  treason. 
He    is    patient    and    faithful    and    obedient. 
When  power  comes  to  him,  he  uses  that  power 
(which  only  just  this  act  of  treason  could 
have  put  into  his  hands),  first,  to  accomphsh 
a  great  work  of  good  for  the  community  of  a 
great  kingdom.     Herewith,  according  to  the 
tale,  he  provides  for   the   future  honor  and 
glory  of  his  own  family  for  all  time  to  come. 
And  then,  being  brought  once  more  into  touch 
with  his  family,  he  behaves  with  such  clem- 
ency, and    justice,    and    family    loyalty;    he 
shows  such  transient  but  amiable  brotherly 
severity  towards  the  former  traitors,  he  shows 
also  such  tender  filial  devotion ;    his  weeping 
when  the  family  unity  is  restored  is  so  rich  in 

2  b  369 


■■^^.i^x^t^ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pathos;  his  care  in  providing  for  his  father 
and  for  the  future  is  so  wise;  his  creative 
skill  in  making  again  into  one  fair  whole 
what  treason  had  shattered  is  so  wonderful,  — 
that  all  these  things  together  make  the  situa- 
tion one  whereof  the  child  says  without  definite 
words,  what  we  now  say  :  "Through  Josggk's 
work  all  is  made,  in  fact,  better  than  it  would 
have  been  had  there  been  no  treason  at  all." 
Now  I  submit  that  Joseph's  atoning  work  con- 
sists simply  in  this  triumphantly  ingenious 
creation  of  good  out  of  ill.  That  the  breth- 
ren confess  and  repent  is  inevitable,  and  is  a 
part  of  the  good  result;  but  by  itself  that  is 
only  a  poor  offering  on  their  part.  It  is 
Joseph  who  atones.  His  atonement  is,  of 
course,  vicarious.  But  it  is  perfectly  ob- 
jective. And  it  is  no  vicarious  "penal  satis- 
faction" whatever.  It  is  simply  the  triumph 
of  the  spirit  of  the  family  through  the  devoted 
loyalty  of  an  individual.  This,  in  fact,  is, 
in  substance,  what  Joseph  himself  says  in  his 
closing  words  to  his  brethren. 

Joseph  turns  into  a  good,  for  the  family,  for 

370 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
the  world,  for  his  father,  for  the  whole  com- 
munity  involved,  what  his  brothers  had  made 
1  J.     In  his  deed,  through  his  skill,  as  well  as 
througli  his  suffering,  the  world  is  made  better 
than  It  would  have  been  had  the  treason  never 
been    done.     This,    I    insist,    constitutes    his 
atoning  work. 

As  to  the  bretliren,  -  their  treason  is.  of 
course,  irrevocable.     Joseph's  deed  does  not 
wipe  out  that  guilt  of  their  own.     But  they 
can  stand  in  the  presence  of  their  community 
and    hear    the    distinctly   reconciling    word  • 
\  ou  have  been  the  indirect  cause  of  a  good 
that,  by  the  grace  and  the  ingenuity  of  the 
community  and  of  its  faithful  servant,  has 
now  been  created,  while,  but  for  your  treason, 
this  good  could  not  have  been  created.     Your 
sm  cannot  be  cancelled.     Nor  are  you  in  any 
wise  the  doers  of  the  atoning  deed.     But  the 
community  welcomes  you  to  its  love  again, 
not  as  those  whose  irrevocable  deed  has 
been  cancelled,  but  as  those  whom  love  has  so 
overruled  that  you  have  been  made  a  source 
whence  a  spring  of  good  flows." 

371 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  repentant  and  thankful  brothers  can 
now  accept  this  reconcihation,  —  never  as  a 
destruction  of  their  guilt,  but  as  a  new  and  an 
objective  fact  whose  significance  they  are 
wilHng  to  lay  at  the  basis  of  a  new  loyalty. 
The  community  is  renewed ;  the  spirit  has 
triumphed ;  and  the  traitors  are  glad  that  the 
irrevocable  deed  which  they  condemn  has  been 
made  a  source  of  a  good  which  never  could 
have  existed  without  it.  They  are  in  a  new~ 
friendship  with  their  community,  since  the 
ends  that  have  triumphed  unite  the  new  will 
with  the  old  and  evil  will,  through  a  new  con- 
quest of  the  evil. 

Let  my  illustration  pass  for  what  it  is 
worth.  I  still  insist  that  an  atonement  of  this 
sort,  if  it  occurs  at  all,  is  a  perfectly  objective 
fact,  namely,  the  creation  by  somebody  of  a 
definite  individual  good  on  the  basis  of  a 
definite  previous  evil.  That  the  total  result, 
in  a  given  case,  such  as  that  of  Joseph,  is 
something  better  than  would  have  existed,  or 
than  would  have  been  possible,  had  not  that 
evil  deed  first  been  done,  to  which  the  atoning 

372 


t 


I 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
deed  is  the  response,  —  all  this,  I  say,  is  a 
perfectly  proper  matter  for  a  purely  objective 
study.     Such    a    study    has    the    difficulties 
which  attend  all  inquiries  into  objective  values 
But  these  difficulties  do  not  make  the  matter 
one  of  arbitrary  whim. 

Moreover,  if  the  atoning  deed  has  brought 
as  a  fact,  such  good  out  of  evil  that,  despite 
the  evil  deed,  the  world  is  better  than  it  could 
have  been  if  the  evil  deed  had  not  been  done, 
-  then  this  very  fact  has  its  own  reconciling 
value,  -  a  value  hmited  but  precious.     The 
repentant    sinner,    seeing    what,    in    Adam's 
vision,  Milton  makes  the  first  human  sinner 
foresee,  will  rightly  find  a  genuine  consola- 
tion, and  a  true  reunion  with  his  community 
m  thus  being  aware  that  his  iniquity  has  been 
overruled  for  good. 

A  theory  of  atonement,  founded  upon  this 
basis,  IS  capable  of  as  technical  treatment  as 
any  other,  and  deals  with  facts  and  values 
which  human  wit  can  investigate,  so  far  as 
the  facts  m  question  are  accessible  to  us 
t^uch  a  theory  of  atonement  could  be  apphed 

373 


»iiBiiiiiii-wii>i|iiBMjlhn'^ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

to  estimate  the  atoning  work  of  Christ,  by 
any  one  who  beHeved  himself  to  be  suffi- 
ciently in  touch  with  the  facts  about  Christ's 
supposed  work.  It  would  be  capable  of  as 
technical  a  statement  as  our  knowledge  war- 
ranted. 

This  then,  in  brief,  is  my  proposal  looking 
towards  an  interpretation  of  the  idea  of  atone- 
ment. 

X 

Turning  once  more  to  view,  in  the  light  of 
this  interpretation,  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
life  in  its  unity,  we  may  see  how  all  the  ideas 
now  unite  to  give  to  this  doctrine  a  touch  both 
with  the  ethical  and  with  the  religious  interests 
of  humanity. 

To  sum  up :  As  individuals  we  are  lost ; 
that  is,  are  incapable  of  attaining  the  true  goal 
of  Ufe.  This  our  loss  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
we  have  not  love.  So  the  Master  taught. 
But  the  problem  is  also  the  problem :  For 
what  love  shall  I  seek  ^  What  love  will  save 
me.^  Here,  if  we  restrict  our  answer  to 
human  objects,  and  deliberately  avoid  theol- 

374 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

ogy,  the  Christian  answer  is :  Love  the  Com- 
munity.     That  is,  be  Loyal. 

Yet  one  further  asks :    What  community 
shall  I  love  ?     The  answer  to  this  question  has 
been  lengthily  discussed.     We  need  not  here 
at  any  length,   repeat  it.     Speaking  still  in 
human  terms,  we  are  to  love  a  community 
which,  m  ideal,  is  identical  with  all  mankind 
but  which  can  never  exist  on  earth  until  man 
has    been  transfigured  and    unified,  as    Paul 
hoped  that  his  churches  would  soon  witness 
this   transfiguration   and   this   union,   at   the 
end  of  the  world. 

So  far  as  this  ideal  indeed  takes  possession 
of  us,  we  can  direct  our  human  life  in  the 
spirit  of  this  love  for  the  community,  far 
away  as  the  goal  may  seem  and  be. 

Yet  what  stands  in  the  way  of  our  being 
completely  absorbed  by  this  ideaP  The 
answer  is :  Our  enemy  is  what  Paul  called 
the  flesh,  and  found  further  emphasized  by 
the  law."  This  enemy  is  due  to  our  nature 
as  social  beings,  so  far  as  this  nature  is  cul- 
tivated   by    social    conditions    which,    while 

375 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

training  our  self -consciousness,  even  thereby 
inflame  our  self-will.  This  our  social  nature, 
then,  is  the  basis  of  our  natural  enmity  both 
towards  the  law,  and  towards  the  spirit. 

How  can  this  natural  enmity  be  overcome  ? 
The  answer  is :  By  the  means  of  those  uni- 
fying social  influences  which  Paul  regarded 
as  due  to  grace.  Genius,  and  only  genius,  — 
the  genius  which,  in  the  extreme  cases,  founds 
new  rehgions,  and  which,  in  the  better  known 
cases,  creates  great  social  movements  of  a 
genuinely  saving  value,  can  create  the  com- 
munities which  arouse  love,  which  join  the 
faithful  into  one,  and  which  transform  the  old 
man  into  the  new.  When  once  we  have  come 
under  the  spell  of  such  creative  genius,  and 
of  the  communities  of  which  some  genius  ap- 
pears to  be  the  spirit,  —  only  then  can  we  too 
die  to  the  old  hfe,  and  be  renewed  in  the  spirit. 
The  early  Christian  community  is  (still  speak- 
ing in  human  terms)  one  great  historical  in- 
stance of  such  a  source  of  salvation.  To  be 
won  over  to  the  level  of  such  a  community  is, 
just  in  so  far,  to  be  saved. 

376 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

But  the  will  of  the  loyal  is,  in  the  purely 
human  and  practical  sense,  a  will  that  we  caU 
free.     The  higher  the  spiritual  gifts  in  question 
are,  the  greater  is  the  opportunity  for  wilful 
treason  to  the  community  to  which  we  have 
once  given  faith.     The  consequences  of  every 
deed  include  the  great  fact  that  each  deed  is 
irrevocable.     And  the  penalty  of  wilful  trea- 
son,  therefore,  is,  for  the  traitor,  -  precisely 
m  so  far  as  he  knows  himself,  and  values  his 
hfe  in  its  larger  connections,  -  an  essentially 
endless  penalty,  -  the  penalty  which  he  as- 
signs  to  himself,  -  the  fact  of  his  sin. 

For  such  penalty  is  there  any  aid  that  can    f 
come  to  us  through  the  atoning  deed  of  an-    ' 
other  ?     There  is  such  aid  possible.     In  the 
human   world  we    can    never    count   upon    it. 
But  it  is  possible.     And  sometimes,  by  the 
grace  of  the  community,  and  by  the  free  wiU 
of  a  noble  soul,  such  aid  comes.     As  a  fact, 
the  whole  hfe  of  man  gets  its  highest  -  one  is' 
often  disposed  to  say,  its  only  real  and  abiding 
goods,  from  the  conquest  over  ill.     Atoning 
deeds,    deeds    that,    through    sacrifices,    win 

377 


t 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


again  the  lost  causes  of  the  moral  world,  not 
by  undoing  the  irrevocable,  nor  by  making 
the  old  bitterness  of  defeat  as  if  it  never 
had  been,  but  by  creating  new  good  out  of 
ancient  ill,  and  by  producing  a  total  realm  of 
life  which  is  better  than  it  would  have  been 
had  the  evil  not  happened,  —  atoning  deeds 
express  the  most  nearly  absolute  loyalty 
which  human  beings  can  show.  The  atoning 
deeds  are  the  most  creative  of  the  expressions 
which  the  community  gives,  through  the  deed 
of  an  individual,  to  its  will  that  the  unity  of 
the  spirit  should  triumph,  not  only  despite, 
but  through,  the  greatest  tragedies,  —  the 
tragedies  of  dehberate  sin. 

Through  the  community,  or  on  its  behalf, 
the  atoning  deeds  are  done.  The  individual 
who  has  sinned,  but  who  knows  of  free  atoning 
deeds  that  indeed  have  been  done,  —  deeds 
whereby  good  comes  out  of  his  evil,  —  can  be 
not  wholly  reconciled  to  his  own  past,  but 
truly  restored  to  the  meaning  of  the  loyal 
hfe.  Upon  the  hope  that  such  atoning  deeds, 
if  they  have  not  been  done  because  of  our  sins, 

378 


^^i^S&iA  »^>^^^3£«'l 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
may  yet  be  done,  all  of  us  depend  for  such  re- 
winning  of  our  spiritual  relations  to  our  com- 
munity as  we  have  sinned  away.     And  thus 
the  idea  of  the  community  and  the  idea  of 
atonement,  -  both  of  them,  still  interpreted 
in  purely  human   fashion,   but  extended   in 
ideal  through  the  whole  realm  that  the  human 
spirit  can  ever  conquer,  form  in  their  insep- 
arable union,  and    in  their   relation    to   the 
other  Christian  ideas,  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life.     The  Christian  life  is  one  that  first, 
as  present   in   the  individual,   offers   to   the 
community   practical   devotion   and    absorb- 
ing love.     This  same  life,  also  present  in  the 
individual,  looks  to  the  community  for   the 
grace  that  saves  and  for  the  atonement  that, 
so  far  as  may  be,  reconciles.     As  incorporate 
m  the  community,  or  as  incarnate  in  those  who 
act  as  the  spirit  of  the  community,  and  who 
create   new   forms    of   the  community,   and 
originate  atoning  deeds,  —  as  thus  present  in 
the  community  and  in  its  creatively  loyal  in- 
dividual members,  the  Christian  life  expresses 
the  postulate,  the  prayer,  the  world-conquer- 

379 


Ei^ittt^fetfdfart 


% 


THE    PROBLEM    O.F    CHRISTIANITY 

ing  will,  whose  word  is  :  Let  the  spirit  triumph. 
Let  no  evil  deed  be  done  so  deep  in  its  treach- 
ery but  that  creative  love  shall  find  the  way 
to  make  the  world  better  than  it  would  have 
been  had  that  evil  deed  not  been  done. 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  life  consists  in 
observing  and  asserting  that  these  ideas  have 
their  real  and  distinctly  human  basis.  This 
doctrine  also  consists  in  the  purely  voluntary 
assertion  that,  in  so  far  as  these  ideals  are  not 
yet  verifiable  in  human  life  as  it  is,  this  life  is 
to  be  lived  as  if  they  were  verifiable,  or  were 
sure  to  become  so  in  the  fulness  of  time. 
For  that  fulness  of  time,  for  that  coming  of 
the  Kingdom,  we  both  labor  and  wait. 


VIII 

THE  MODERN  MIND  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN 

IDEAS 


380 


LECTURE   VIII 

THE  MODERN  MIND  AND  THE  CHRISTUN 

IDEAS 

mHROUGHOUT    our    exposition    of    the 
A      ideas  which,  in  their  unity,  constitute 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  hfe,  we  have  intended 
to  bring  to  Hght  the  relations  of  these  ideas  to 
the  modern  mind.     Whenever  we  have  at- 
tempted   to   define   what    we   mean    by   the 
modern  mind,  we  have  been  guided  by  two 
considerations.     First,    certain   opinions   and 
mental  attitudes  seem  to  be  characteristic  of 
leading  teachers  and  of  representative  ten- 
dencies   in    our    own    day.     Secondly,   these 
prominent  ideas  of  our  day  express  general 
lessons  which  the  history  of  mankind  appears 
to  us  to  have  taught.     We  have  accepted  the 
postulate  that  history  includes  a  more  or  less 
coherent  education  of  the  human  race ;   and 
then  have  we  viewed  the  modern  mind  as  the 
present  heir  to  this  wisdom.     And  therefore 
some  at  least  of  the  prominent  ideas  of  our 

383 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

day  have  seemed  to  deserve  their  prominence 
because  they  express  part  of  the  lesson  of 
history. 

How  vague  the  resulting  general  conception 
of  the  modern  mind  and  of  its  opinions  neces- 
sarily is,  we  have  acknowledged.  But  the  con- 
ception is  useful,  simply  because  it  enables 
us  to  summarize  a  type  of  convictions  that 
possess  indeed  no  supreme  authority,  but 
that  are  signs  which  men  must  interpret,  and 
leadings  which  they  must  attempt  to  follow, 
if  they  are  to  take  part  in  that  collective 
human  life  which  is  to  record  itself  in  future 
history,  and  if  our  age  is  to  teach  any  lesson 
to  those  who  shall  come  after  us. 

The  present  lecture  will  be  devoted  to  a 
summary  of  some  of  the  lessons  which  the 
history  of  religion  seems  to  have  taught 
mankind,  and  to  a  general  study  of  the  bear- 
ing of  these  lessons  upon  our  estimate  of  the 
present  and  the  future  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. 


384 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANI 


TY 


There  are  three  lessons  of  rehgfous  history 
and  three  views  prominent  in  recent  discussion' 
which  may  be  said  to  form  part  of  the  charac- 
teristically modern  view  of  the  meaning  and 
destmy  of  religion. 

First,  rehgion  is,  historically  speaking,   a 
product  of  certain  human  needs ;   and  its  en- 
durance depends  upon  its  power  to  meet  those 
needs.     A  religion  which  ceases  to  strengthen 
hearts  and  to  fulfil  the  just  demands  of  the 
human  spirit  for  guidance  through  the  wilder- 
ness of  this  world,  is  doomed ;  and  in  due  time 
passes  away ;  as  the  religion  of  Greco-Roman 
antiquity  decayed  and  died ;  and  as  countless 
tribal  and  national  religions  have  died,  along 
with   the   social   orders   and   cultures   which 
they,  in   their  day,  sustained  and   inspired. 
To  use  a  metaphor  which  I  believe  to  be 
neither  trivial  nor  unjust :   The  gods,  as  man 
conceives  the  gods,  live  upon  spiritual  food  • 
but,  viewed  in  the  light  of  histoiy,  they  appear 
as  beings  who  must  earn  their  bread  by  supply- 


2c 


385 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


ing,  in  their  turn,  the  equally  spiritual  suste- 
nance which  their  worshippers  need.  And 
unless  they  thus  earn  their  bread,  the  gods  die  ; 
and  the  holy  places  that  have  known  them, 
know^  them  no  more  forever.  Let  the  ruins 
of  ancient  temples  suggest  the  meaning  that 
lies  behind  my  figure  of  speech. 

To  make  this  assertion  concerning  the  in- 
evitable fortunes  of  all  reHgions,  is  not  to  re- 
duce the  conception  of  rehgious  truth  to  that 
which  current  pragmatism  emphasizes.  The 
relation  between  the  two  conceptions  of  reh- 
gious truth  which  are  in  question  will  concern 
us  in  our  later  lectures.  Here  it  is  enough  to 
say  that  I  am  not  now  deciding  whether  or 
no  any  religious  truth  is  absolute;  but  am 
expressly  hmiting  myself  to  the  forms  under 
which  religious  truth  and  error  enter  human 
history. 

The  needs  of  the  worshippers  determine,  in 
the  long  run,  the  historical  fate  of  rehgions. 
It  is  just,  however,  to  add,  that  worshippers 
actually  need  an  everlasting  gospel ;  and  that, 
if  such  a  gospel  were  to  be  revealed  to  man,  it 

386 


MODERN  MIND  AND  CHRISTIANITY 
would  not  only  satisfy  human  needs,  but  also 
contain  absolute  religious  truth. 

What  I  thus  point  out  is  simply  meant  to 
emphasize   the  assertion   that   the  realm   of 
religion  is  a  realm,  not  of  merely  natural  facts 
but  of  will  and  of  need,  of  desire,  of  longing' 
and  of  satisfaction.     In  other  words,  as  it  is 
now  customary  to  state  the  case,  religion  is 
mamly  concerned,  not  with  facts  that  belong 
to  the  material  world,  but  with  values.     Re- 
ligion, meanwhile,  aims  at  the  absolute,  but 
has  no  vehicle  to  carry  its  message  to  our^ 
selves  except  the  vehicle  of  human  experiencj 
1  he  goal  of  religion  is  something  beyond  all  our 
transient  strivings.     But  its  path  lies  through 
the  realm  of  human  needs. 

And  so,  when  a  religion  loses  touch  with 
human  needs,  it  dies. 


II 

Such  is  the  first  of  the  three  modern  opinions 
about  rehgion  to  which  I  wish  to  call  attention. 
1  he  second  may  be  stated  in  well-known  terms. 
We  live  m  an  age  when  there  have  ah-eady 

387 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

occurred  great  recent  changes  in  the  spiritual 
needs  whereof  men  are  conscious.  And  in  the 
near  future  still  greater  changes  in  these  needs 
are  Ukely  to  be  felt.  I 

Those  changes  in  the  needs  of  mankind 
which  led  to  the  decay  and  death  of  the 
religions  of  antiquity  were  petty  in  contrast 
to  the  vast  transformations  of  the  human 
spirit  to  which  our  modern  conditions  seem 
likely  to  lead  within  the  next  few  centuries. 
Physical  science  and  the  industrial  arts  are 
altering  the  ver>^  foundations  of  our  culture, 
of  our  social  order,  and  of  our  opinions  regard- 
ing nature.  This  alteration  is  now  taking 
place  at  a  rate  for  which  po  previous  age  of 
human  history  furnishes  any  parallel.  Apart 
from  chance  catastrophes,  which  seem  un- 
likely to  happen,  these  processes  of  mental 
and  of  social  change  are  likely  to  continue 
at  a  constantly  increasing  rate.  In  conse- 
quence, man's  whole  spiritual  outlook  will 
probably  soon  become  different  from  any 
outlook  that  men  have  ever  before  experi- 
enced.   This   law   of  constantly   accelerated 

388 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

Change  promises  to  dominate  the  most 
essential  interests  of  the  civilization  of  the 
near  future. 

Concerning  this  second  thesis  which  I  here 
attribute  to  the  modern  mind,  there  is  likely 
to  be  little  difference  of  opinion  amongst  us 
Many  of  us  fear  or  deplore  great  spiritual 
changes.     We  all  feel  sure  that  such  will  soon 
occur.     We   know   that,   regarding  all   such 
matters,  we  have  indeed  no  right  to  predict 
the  future  of  humanity  in  any  but  the  most 
general    terms.     Yet    the   prospect    of    very 
rapid  and  vast  mental  and  social  transfor- 
mations, in  the  near  future  of  civilization,  is 
emphasized    in    our    minds    by    innumerable 
considerations.     Few  of  us  are  disposed  to 
believe  that,  were  we  permitted  to  return  to 
earth  a  very  few  centuries  from  now,  we  should 
hnd  that  even  the  dearest  and  oldest  of  the 
traditional   features  of   our   civilization  had 
>    remained  exempt  from  momentous  and,  to  our 
mmds,  bewildering  alterations. 

The  wildest  flights  of  imagination  regarding 
such  possibUities  often  seem  to  us  instructive, 

389 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


( 


just  because  they  help  us  to  read  one  great 
warning  which  the  modern  world  gives  us. 
This  is  the  w^arning  that  nothing  in  human 
affairs  is  so  sacred  as  to  be  sure  of  escaping 
the  workings  of  this  law  of  accelerated  change. 

Ill 

The  third  of  the  modern  opinions  which  I 
here  have  in  mind  is  closely  associated  with 
the  two  foregoing  theses. 

In  ancient  civilizations  the  religious  insti- 
tutions were  often  supported  by  the  whole 
social  power  of  the  peoples  concerned,  so 
that  the  religious  life  of  a  nation  belonged  to 
whatever  was  most  characteristic  and  most 
conservative  about  the  civilization  in  question. 
In  the  Middle  Ages,  despite  the  enormous 
complexity  of  the  Christian  social  order,  the 
religious  institutions  still  formed  a  very  large 
part  of  what  was  most  essential  to  European 
culture.  But  in  recent  times  religious  insti- 
tutions— institutions  of  the  nature  of  churches, 
of  sects,  or  of  religious  orders  —  stand  in  a 
much  less  central  position  in  our  organized 

390 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
social    life    than   ever    before.     The   tangible 
/   social  importance  of  tliese  institutions  grows 
constantly  less  rather  than  greater.     Had  all 
the  temples  of  a  typical  ancient  city,  and  had 
all  Its  priests  and  sacred  places,  been  suddenly 
destroyed,    so   that    none    of    the  customary 
festivals   and   sacrifices   could  be  carried  on 
we  know  how  tragically  the  whole  life  o^  that 
city  would  have  been  disturbed,  if  not  wholly 
paralyzed.     But  our  modern  industrial  arts 
our  world-wide  commerce,  our  daily  business,' 
our  international   relations,  grow  constantly 
more  and   more  independent  of  any  ecclesi- 
astical    and,   in  fact,  of  any  public  religious 
activities    or    institutions;     so    that,    if    all 
churches  and  priesthoods  and  congregations 
were    temporarily    to    suspend    their    public 
functions  and  their  visible  doings,  our  market- 
places  and  factories  and  merchants  and  armies 
would  continue  to  go  on,  for  the  time,  much 
as  usual. 

In  consequence,  in  the  modern  world,  reli- 
gion no  longer  has  the  effective  institutional 
support  of   the  whole  collective  social  will. 

391 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

but  lives  more  apart  from  the  other  great 
social   interests,  and  dwells  more  in  a  realm 
where  '^internal    faith    rather    than    publicly 
administered  law  determines  the  range  of  its 
control.     Hence    when    the    social    world    is 
subject  to  forces  which  tend  towards  change, 
religion  no  longer  stands  at  the  point  where 
the  most  conservative  powers  of  society  are 
massed.     Religion  must  depend  for  its  ability 
to  resist  change  upon  new  weapons.     Con- 
servatism S  will  no  longer  stand  as  its  potent 
and    natural    defender.     The    human    needs 
that  it  is  to  meet  will  be  in  a  state  of  constant 
growth.       The  visible     social     organizations 
which    have    been    its    closest    allies    in    the 
past  can  no  longer  be  counted  upon  to  pre- 
serve   its    visible    forms.     Once,    when    the 
(temples   and   the   gods   were  threatened,   all 
the  state  rose  as  one  man  to  defend  them. 
(For  they  were  the  centre  of  the  social  order.  ) 
But  henceforth  commerce  and  industry  will 
tend  to  take  the  place  in  men's  minds  which 
(religious    institutions    once    occupied.  ■    The 
things  of  the  spirit  must  now  be  defended 

392 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

With  the  sword  of  the  spirit.  .  Worldly  weapons 
can  no  longer  be  used  either  to  propagate  or 
to  preserve  religion.  Religion  must  find  its 
own  way  to  the  hearts  of  the  coming  genera- 
tions. And  these  hearts  will  be  stirred  by 
countless  new  cares  and  hopes.  The  human 
problem  of  religion  will  grow  constantly  more 
complicated. 

(Our  three  assertions  of  the  modern  mind 
regarding  religion   define   for   us,   then,    the 
religious  problem  of  the  future.     No  religion 
can  survive  unless  it  keeps  in  touch  with  men's 
conscious  needs.     In  the  future  men's  needs 
will  be  subject  to  vastly  complex  and  rapidly 
changing  social  motives.     In  the  future,  reli- 
gion, as  a  power  aiming  to  win  and  to  keep  a 
place  m  men's  hearts,  can  no  longer  perma- 
nently count  on  the  institutional  forces  which 
have  m  the  past  been  amongst  its  strongest 
supports.     Its  own  institutions  will  tend,  with 
the    whole    course    of   civilization,    to    come 
increasingly  under  the  sway  of  the  law  of 
accelerated  change.     The  non-religious  insti- 
tutions of  the  future,  the  kingdoms  and  the 

393 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

democracies  of  this  world,  the  social  structures 
which  will  be  used  for  the  purposes  of  pro- 
duction, of  distribution,  and  of  political  life, 
will  certainly  exemplify  the  law  of  accelerated 
change.  And  these  social  structures  will  not 
be  under  the  control  of  religious  institutions. 

IV 

Such  are  some  of  the  lessons  which  history 
and  the  present  day  teach  to  the  modern 
mind.  Such  are  the  conditions  which  deter- 
mine the  religious  problems  of  the  future. 
What  shall  we  say  of  these  problems,  in  their 
bearing  upon  Christianity  .^ 

In  answer  we  can  only  take  account  of 
what  we  have  gained  for  an  understanding  of 
our  situation  through  our  study  of  the  Chris- 
tian ideas.  What  we  need  is  to  look  again 
at  the  sword  of  the  spirit  which  is  still  in  the 
hands  of  religion.  » 

Were  the  strength  of  the  Christian  religion, 
in  its  contest  with  the  coming  modern  world, 
mainly  the  strength  of  its  already  existing 
religious    institutions,    w^e    can    see    at    once 

394 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
that   all   the  three  considerations   which   we 
liave  just  emphasized  would  combine  to  make 
the  prospects  of  the  contest  doubtful.     It  is 
true   that   no   reasonable   man   ought   for  a 
moment  to  underestimate  the  actual  vitality 
of  the  religious  institutions  of  the  Christian 
world,  viewed  simply  as  institutions.     Asser- 
tions are  indeed  sometimes  made  to  the  effect 
that  the  Church,  in  all  its  various  forms  and 
divisions,  or  in  very  many  of  them,  is  already 
very   rapidly   losing   touch,    or   has   already 
hopelessly  lost  touch,  with  the  modern  world- 
and   that   here   the  process  of  estrangement 
between  the  Church  and  modern  life  is  con- 
stantly accelerated.  Some  observers  even  ven- 
ture to  predict  a  rapid  dwindling  of  all  or  most 
of  the  ecclesiastical  institutions  of  Christendom 
in  the  near  future.     I  suppose  all  such  extreme 
assertions    to    be    hasty    and    unwarranted, 
niiat  we  can  see  is  merely  this:    that  if  the 
future  of  Christianity  depended  upon  its  insti- 
tutions rather  than  upon  its  ideas,  the  result 
of  changes  that  lie  before  us  would  be  doubtful    K 
But  our  study  of  the  Christian  ideas  has  ' 

395 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

shown  that  the  deepest  human  strength  of 
this  rehgion  Hes  precisely  in  these  ideas  them- 
selves.    By  the  might  of  these  ideas  early 
Christianity    conquered    the    Roman    world. 
In  the  light  of  these  ideas  European  civiliza- 
tion has  since  been  transformed  ;  and  by  their 
spirit  it  still  guides  its  hfe.     These  Christian 
ideas,  —  not  their  formulations  in  the  creeds, 
—  not  their  always  inadequate  institutional 
embodiment,  —  and   of   course   not   any   ab- 
stract statement  of  them  such  as  our  philo- 
sophical sketch  has  attempted,  —  these  ideas 
constitute  the  sword  of  the  spirit  with  which 
the   Christian   religion   has   to   carry   on   its 
warfare.     What  makes  its  contest  with  the 
world  of  the  future  hopeful  is  simply  the  fact 
that,  whatever  creed  or  institution  or  practice 
may  lose  its  hold  on  the  modern  mind,  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  is  the  expression  of 
universal   human   needs,  —  and   of  the   very 
needs  upon  whose  satisfaction  the  very  life 
of  every  social  order  depends  for  its  worth 
and    for    its    survival.     No    progress    in    the 
industrial  arts,  and  no  massing  of  population 

396 


! 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
or  of  wealth,  and  no  scheme  of  political  re- 
form can  remove  from  the  human  mind  and 
the  human  heart  these  needs,  and  the  ideas 
that  alone  can  satisfy  them.     As  for  social 
changes,    they    will    inevitably    mean    vast 
social  tragedies.     But  such  tragedies  can  only 
emphas,.e  the   very  longings   to   which   the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  appeals.     Whatever 
happens  to  any  of  the  visible  forms  and  insti- 
tutions of  Christianity,  the  soul  of  this  reli- 
gion can  always  defiantly  say  to  itself:  _ 

Stab  at  thee  then  who  wfll; 
No  stab  the  soul  can  kill. 

With  this  interpretation  of  its  mission  pres- 
ent to  ,ts  mind,  it  can  face  all  its  enemies  with 
all  the  might  of  the  spirit  upon  its  side.  It 
IS  this  view  of  the  relation  between  the  Chris- 
tian Ideas  and  the  modern  world  which  I  here 
wish  to  emphasize. 

To  accomplish  this  end,  we  have  merely  to 
sum  up  what  our  whole  study  has  already 
taught  us,  and  to  contrast  our  views  with 
those  which  some  other  accounts  of  the  prob- 
lem of  Christianity  have  defended. 

397 


\fM 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


Many,  in  our  day,  are  disposed  to  think 
that  the  true,  or  perhaps  also  the  last,  refuge 
of   religion   is  some  form  of   mystical  piety. 
Retire   from  the   world;    seek   rest   in   what 
Meister  Eckhart  called  the  wilderness  of  the 
Godhead;    win   an   immediate  experience   of 
the  presence  of  the  divine;    surrender  your 
individuality;    let  God  be  all  in  all  to  you; 
and  then,  —  so  such  lovers  of  religion  declare, 
—  you   will  indeed   win  the  peace  that  the 
world  can  neither  give  nor  take  away.     By 
such   a   flight   into   Egypt   the   defenders   of 
mystical  religion  hope  to  save  the  divine  life 
from  the  hands  of  the  Herod  of  modern  world- 
liness.     If    you    thus    flee,    they    say,    you 
may  find  what  the  saints  of  old  found  in  their 
deserts  and  their  cloisters.     Modern  civiliza- 
tion, with  all  its  restlessness,  will  then  become 
to  you,  so  the  partisans  of  mystical  religion 
insist,  a  matter  of  indifference.     Time,  with 
all    its    mysterious    futures    and    its    endless 
changes,    will    for    you    simply    pass    away. 

398 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
You  will  behold  the  end  of  all  things.     You 
will,  so  to  speak,  witness  the  judgment  day. 
If  Christianity  is  to  triumph  at  all,  such  minds 
hold  that  it  must  triumph  in  the  form  of  the 
mystical    and    utterly    unworldly   piety   thus 
suggested.     Such  solutions  of  the  problem  of 
Christianity  are  at  this  moment  freely  offered 
for  our  need.     Such  solutions  in  plenty  will 
be  offered  in  the  future. 

Now  I  have,  personally,  a  profound  respect 
for  the   mystical   element   in   religion.     The 
problem  of  justly  estimating  that  element  is 
a  problem  as  inexhaustible  as  it  is  fascinating. 
And  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  mystics  have 
indeed    contributed    indispensable    religious 
values    to   our   experience.     I    am    eager   to 
brmg  to  light,  in  our  future  discussion,  what 
some  of  those  values  are.      But  of  this  I  am 
sure  :  Mystical  piety  can  never  either  exhaust 
or   express   the    whole  Christian  doclj-ine   of 
I'fe.     For  th/  Christian  doctrine  of  life;  in  its 
nianifoldness,Nn   the   intensity   and    variety 
of  the  human  interests  to  which  it  appeals, 
IS    an    essentially    social    doctrine.    Private 

399 


ikiKiiHHHaiHH 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

individual   devotion   can  never  justly   inter- 
pret it. 

Paul  was  a  mystic;  but  he  was  a  mystic 
with  a  community  to  furnish  the  garden  where 
the  mystical  flowers  grew;  and  where  the 
fruits  of  the  spirit  were  ripened,  and  where  all 
the  gifts  of  the  spirit  found  their  only  worthy 
expression. 

Without  his  community,  without  his  breth- 
ren to  be  edified,  and  without  charity  to  fur- 
nish the  highest  of  the  spiritual  gifts,  Paul, 
as  he  expressly  tells  us,  would  have  accounted 
all  his  other  gifts  as  making  him  but  as  sound- 
ing brass  and  as  a  tinkling  cymbal.  In  all 
this  he  displayed  that  sound  judgment,  that 
clear  common  sense,  to  which  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  has  always  been  true.  If 
Christianity,  in  the  future,  triumphs,  that 
will  be  because  some  active  and  beloved 
community  comes  gradually  more  and  more 
to  take  control  of  human  affairs,  and  not 
because  religion  has  fled  to  the  recesses  of  any 
wilderness  of  the  Godhead 

As  a  fact,  the  mystical  tendency  in  religion 

400 


uigiiiHiiBii 


ttaBiMtel 


^^ 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
is  not  the  last,  the  mature,  result,  nor  yet  the 
last  refuge,  of  piety.     Mysticism  is  the  always 
young,  it  is  the  ehildlike,  it  is  the  essentially 
immature  aspect  of  the  deeper  religious  life 
Its  ardor,   its  pathos,   its   illusions,   and   its 
genmne  illuminations  have  all  the  characters 
of  youth   about   them,   characters    beautiful 
but  capricious.     Mature  religion  of  the  Chris- 
tian type  takes,  and  must  take,  the  form  of 
loyalty,  -  the  loyalty  which  Paul  lived  out 
and  described.     Loyalty  fulfils  the  individual,' 
not  by  annulling  or  quenching  his  individual 
self-expression,  but  by  teaching  him  to  assert 
himself  through  an  active  and  creative  devo- 
tion  to  his  community.     Hence,    while  one 
may  be  thoroughly  loyal,  and  therefore  thor- 
oughly religious,  without  having  the  gift  or 
the  grace  of  mystical  illumination,  no  mystic 
can  become  truly  religious  unless,  like  all  the 
really  greatest  of  the  mystics,  -  beyond  all 
his   illuminations,    and    besides  all    his  mere 
experiences  of  fulfilment,  or  of  the  immediate 
presence    of    the    Divine,  -  he    attains  to  a 
strenuous,  active  loyalty  which  can  overcome  • 

^o  401 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

individual  devotion  can  never  justly  inter- 
prefit. 

Paul  was  a  mystic;  but  he  was  a  mystic 
with  a  community  to  furnish  the  garden  where 
the  mystical  flowers  grew;  and  where  the 
fruits  of  the  spirit  were  ripened,  and  where  all 
the  gifts  of  the  spirit  found  their  only  worthy 
expression. 

Without  his  community,  without  his  breth- 
ren to  be  edified,  and  without  charity  to  fur- 
nish the  highest  of  the  spiritual  gifts,  Paul, 
as  he  expressly  tells  us,  would  have  accounted 
all  his  other  gifts  as  making  him  but  as  sound- 
ing brass  and  as  a  tinkling  cymbal.  In  all 
this  he  displayed  that  sound  judgment,  that 
/  clear  common  sense,  to  which  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  has  always  been  true.  If 
Christianity,  in  the  future,  triumphs,  that 
will  be  because  some  active  and  beloved 
community  comes  gradually  more  and  more 
to  take  control  of  human  affairs,  and  not 
because  religion  has  fled  to  the  recesses  of  any 
wilderness  of  the  Godhead 

As  a  fact,  the  mystical  tendency  in  religion 

400 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
is  not  the  last,  the  mature,  result,  nor  yet  the 
last  refuge,  of  piety.     Mysticism  is  the  always 
young,  it  is  the  childlike,  it  is  the  essentially 
immature  aspect  of  the  deeper  religious  life 
Its  ardor,   its  pathos,   its   illusions,   and   its 
genmne  illuminations  have  all  the  characters 
of  youth   about   them,   characters    beautiful 
but  capricious.     Mature  religion  of  the  Chris- 
tian type  takes,  and  must  take,  the  form  of 
Royalty,  -  the  loyalty  which  Paul  lived  out 
and  described.     Loyalty  fulfils  the  individual' 
not  by  annulling  or  quenching  his  individual 
self-expression,  but  by  teaching  him  to  assert 
himself  through  an  active  and  creative  devo- 
tion  to  his  community.     Hence,   while  one 
may  be  thoroughly  loyal,  and  therefore  thor- 
oughly religious,  without  having  the  gift  or 
the  grace  of  mystical  illumination,  no  mystic 
can  become  truly  religious  unless,  like  all  the 
really  greatest  of  the  mystics,  -  beyond  all 
his   illuminations,   and   besides  all   his  mere 
experiences  of  fulfilment,  or  of  the  immediate 
presence    of    the    Divine,  -  he    attains  to  a 
strenuous,  active  loyalty  which  can  overcome 
2»  401 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  world  only  by  living  in  the  community. 
The  strength  of  Christianity,  in  its  conflict 
with  the  future  world  of  our  changing  social 
order,  will  therefore  depend  upon  the  fact 
that  its  doctrine  of  life  permits  it,  and  indeed 
requires  it,  to  be  as  practical  and  constructive 
in  its  dealing  with  the  problems  of  social  life 
as  the  industrial  arts  are  practical  and  con- 
structive in  their  production  of  material 
goods.  It  is  the  Christian  will,  and  not  Chris- 
tian   mysticism,    which    must   overcome    the 

world. 

VI 

If  many  thus  suppose  that  the  only  solution 
of  the  problem  of  Christianity  is  a  solution 
in  terms  of  inner  religious  experience,  and  if 
they  hold  that  the  modern  man  should  seek 
to  interpret  his  religion  mainly  or  wholly  in 
a  mystical  sense,  and  should  regard  Chris- 
tianity as  a  religion  of  private  individual 
illumination,  —  there  are  many  others  who 
indeed  vigorously  reject  this  view.  And  some 
such  defenders  of  the  faith  declare  that,  if 
Christianity  is  to  survive  at  all,  it  can  survive 

402 


MODERN  MIND  AND  CHRISTIANITY 
only  in  the  form  of  a  literal  acceptance  of  tJie 
principal  dogmas  of  the  historical  Church. 

Those  Christian  apologists  who  view  our 
problem  in  this  way  declare  that  the  modern 
man,  and  the  civilization  of  the  future,  must 
face  an  old  and  well-known  choice   between 
alternatives.     "Christianity,"    so    they    say 
"declares    itself   to    be   a   revealed    religion.' 
Ihis   declaration   forms   a  part   of  its   very 
essence.     If  one  rejects  the  thesis  that  Chris- 
tianity is  a  revelation  of  God's  will,  the  only 
alternative  is  to  view  Christian  doctrine  as  a 
mere  system  of  ethical  teachings,  and  thus 
to  transform  the  Christian  religion  into  bare 
morality.     The  future  of  Christianity  depends 
wholly  upon  how  this  choice  is  made." 

Our  previous  discussion  now  enables  us  to 
answer  this  frequent  assertion  of  the  apolo- 
gists of  Christian  tradition,  by  insisting  that 
whatever  the  final  truth  about  Christianity 
may  be,  the  choice  between  alternatives  which 
hes  before  the  modern  man  is  not  justly  to  be 
stated  in  any  such  way  as  the  one  upon  which 
these  apologists  so  often  insist. 

403 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


1 


In  fact,  the  most  significant  choice  for  the 
I  modern  man,  in  dealing  with  Christianity, 
/  lies  between  accepting  and  rejecting  the  Chris- 
I  tian  doctrine  of  hfe.  And  the  Christian 
ideas  whereof  this  doctrine  of  life  consists 
can  be  both  estimated  and  put  into  practice 
without  presupposing  any  one  view  of  God  or 
of  revelation,  although  such  an  estimate  may 
indeed  lead,  in  the  end,  to  a  theology.  When 
stated  in  human  terms,  as  we  have  thus  far 
stated  them  in  these  lectures,  the  Christian 
ideas  do  not  constitute  merely  an  ethical 
system.  Nor  is  their  spirit  that  of  a  mere 
morality.  For  they  relate  to  the  salvation  of 
man.  That  is,  they  include  the  assertion  that 
human  life  ought  to  be  guided  in  the  light  of 
a  highest  good  which  is  not  a  merely  wordly 
or  natural  good,  and  which  cannot  be  obtained 
through  mere  skill  in  winning  good  fortune, 
or  in  successfully  living  the  life  of  a  human 
individual.  For  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life 
insists  that  the  human  individual,  as  he  is 
naturally  constituted,  simply  cannot  live  a 
successful  life,  but  must  first  be  transfigured. 

40i 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
The  Christian  ideas  depend  upon  acknowl- 
edging  what  we  have  called  the  distinction 
between  the  two  levels  of  human  existence, 
and  upon  defining  the  highest  good  of  man  in 
terms  of  a  transformation  of  our  individual 
nature.     A    loving    union    of   the    individual 
with  a  level  of  existence  which  is  essentially 
above  his  own  grade  of  being  is  what  the  Chris- 
tian  doctrine  of  life  defines  as  the  way  that 
leads  towards  the  highest  good.     The  whole 
of  Christianity,  as  we  have  seen,  grows  out 
of  this  doctrine  of  the  two  levels. 

But,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  the 
vista  which  this  doctrine  of  the  two  levels 
opens    before    us    is    at    once    human    and 
inimitable.     Man  the  individual  is  essentially 
insufficient  to  win  the  goal  of  his  own  exist- 
ence.    Man  the  community  is  the  source  of 
salvation.     And   by   man   the   community   I 
mean,    m>t    the    collective    biological    entity 
called  the  human  race,  and  not  the  merely 
natural  community  which  gives  to  us,  as  social 
animals,   our  ordinary  moral  training.     Nor 
by  man  the  community  do  I  mean  the  se- 

405 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ries  of  misadventures  and  tragedies  whereof 
the  merely  external  history  of  what  is  called 
humanity  consists.  By  man  the  community 
I  Slean  man  in  the  sense  in  which  Paul  con- 
ceived Christ's  beloved  and  universal  Church 
to  be  a  community,  —  man  viewed  as  one 
conscious  spiritual  whole  of  life.  And  I  say 
that  this  conscious  spiritual  community  is  the 
sole  possessor  of  the  means  of  grace,  and  is 
the  essential  source  of  the  salvation  of  the 
individual.  This,  in  general,  is  what  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  teaches.  The  essen- 
tial problem  for  the  modern  man  is  the  ques- 
tion :   Is  this  doctrine  of  life  true  ? 

Now  the  conception  of  man  the  spiritual 
community  comes  to  our  knowledge,  noU 
in  the  first  place,  by  means  of  any  revelation 
from  the  world  of  the  gods ;  nor  yet  through 
metaphysical  reflection  ;  although,  when  once 
we  have  this  conception,  it  easily  suggests  to  us 
dogmas,  and  easily  seems  to  us  as  if  it  were 
a  superhuman  revelation,  and  also  awakens 
an  inexhaustible    metaphysical    intef<3!^§to|g 

The  saving  idea  of  man   the  commimify 

406 


"m 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

comes  to  us  through  two  kinds  of  perfectly 
human    experience.     First,   it   comes    to    us 
through  the  experience  of  the  failure  both  of 
our  natural  self-will  and  of  our  mere  morality 
to  save  us.     This  failure  is  due  to  the  essential 
defect  of  the  level  upon  which,   by  nature, 
man  the  social  individual   lives.      Buddhism 
was  founded  upon  this  experience  of  the  inevi- 
table  failure  of  the  human  individual  to  win 
his  own  goal.     Paul,  before  his  vision  of  the 
risen  Lord  converted  him,  learned  in  another 
form,  and  by  perfectly  human  experience,  the 
same    negative    lesson.     Individual    self-will 
is  due  to  our  insatiable  natural  greed,  and  is 
only  inflamed  by  our  merely  moral  cultivation. 
Secondly,  however,   when  such  experience 
of  the  failure  of  a  merely  individual  human 
existence  has  done  its  work,  another  sort  of 
experience  is  needed  to  reveal  to  us  the  mean- 
ing of  the  life   which   belongs  to  the  other 
human  level,  —  to  the  level  of  the  beloved 
community.     This  experience  is   the  experi- 
ence  of  the  meaning  of  loyalty.     It  is  this 
experience    which,    while    always    essentially 

407 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

human  in  the  facts  that  it  brings  to  our  no- 
tice, opens  up  its  endless  vistas,  suggests  to  us 
countless  interpretations  in  terms  of  our  rela- 
tions to  a  supernatural  world,  and  justly  seems 
to  be  a  revelation  of  something  not  ourselves 
which  is  worthy  to  be  our  guide  and  salvation. 
This  experience  of  grace  and  of  loyalty  it  is 
which  awakens  an  inexhaustible  metaphysical 
interest. 

Since  these  ethical  and  religious  and  meta- 
Dhysical  vistas  and  interests  are  indeed  end- 
less, and  since  the  life  work  and  the  insight 
to  which  they  call  us  are  constantly  growing, 
there  is  no  one  way  of  defining  in  dogmatic 
formulas  that  view  of  God  or  of  revelation  to 
which  they  will  always  require  us  to  adhere. 
Man  the  community,  without  ceasing  to  be 
genuinely    human,    may    also    prove    to    be 
divine.     That  is  a  matter  for  further  inquiry. 
Loyalty,  without  ceasing  to  be  a  spirit  that 
we  learn  through  our  human  relations,  may 
also  prove  to  be  a  revelation  from  a  realm  of 
life  which  is  infinitely  superior  to  any  human 
life  that  we  now  experience.     In  other  words, 

408 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

the  higher  of  the  two  levels  of  human  exist- 
ence may  prove  to  be,   not  only  essentially 
above    our    individual    level,    but    endlessly 
and   quite  divinely  above  that  level.     Man 
the  community  may  prove  to  be  God,  as  the 
traditional  doctrine  of  Christ,  of  the  Spirit, 
and  of  the  Church  seems  to  imply.     But  all 
such  possible  outcomes  and  interpretations, 
to  which  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  may 
lead,  must  be  discovered  for  themselves.  It  is 
vain  to  narrow  the  choice  that  lies  before  the 
modern  man  and  before  the  future  social  order 
to  a  choice  between  any  one  set  of  traditional 
dogmas  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  mere  morality 
on  the  other. 


VII 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  life  is  therefore 
no  mere  morahty,  any  more  than  it  is  a  mere 
mysticism.  And  yet  it  does  not  depend  upon 
first  accepting  any  one  form  of  theology  or 
any  one  view  about  revelation.  For  one  who- 
wishes  to  judge  fairly  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life,  the  choice  which  is  to  be  faced  is  there- 

409 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

fore  this :  Either  a  doctrine  that  individuals 
can  work  out  their  own  salvation,  or  else  a 
recognition  that  salvation  comes  through 
loyalty  to  the  beloved  community  and  through 
the  influence  of  the  realm  of  grace.  Loyalty, 
—  the  beloved  community,  —  the  realm  of 
grace,  —  these  are  indeed  essential  features  of 
Christian  doctrine. 

The  various  views  about  revelation  which 
have  taken  part  in  Christian  history  can  be 
understood  only  in  case  this  contrast  between 
the  two  levels,  and  the  practical  significance 
of  grace,  of  salvation,  and  of  loyalty,  have 
first  been  made  clear  in  human  terms.  But 
if  these  human  aspects  of  the  Christian  ideas 
have  been  grasped,  one  may  then  go  on  to  the 
comprehension  of  what  the  Christian  views 
about  God  have  been  trying,  with  varied 
symbolism,  to  present  to  the  minds  of  men. 
One  who  approaches  the  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity with  the  lore  of  the  two  levels  of 
human  existence  well  in  mind  will  be  ready 
for  spiritual  novelties.  He  will  not  limit 
himself   to   any   simple  pair   of  alternatives. 

410 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 
His  creed  will  be  neither  a  narrow  moralism 
nor  an  equally  narrow  traditional  dogmatism. 
He  will  perceive  that  we  have  endlessly  new 
things  yet  to   learn   about   what   were,   and 
still   are,   the   sources   of   Christian   doctrine 
and  life,  — the    sources    of   the    inspirations 
which  guide  humanity  into  novel  undertak- 
ings, and  the  sources,  also,  of  those  traditions 
of  the  Church  which  symbolized  so  much  more 
then  they  made  explicit.     He  will  also  be  quite 
ready  to  see  that,  despite  all  the  changes  of 
doctrine,  the  unity  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life  has  been  and  can  be  retained,  —  and 
retained  just  because  Christianity  is  a  doc- 
trine of  life,  and  hence  a  doctrine  of  that 
which  preserves  its  meaning  through  change, 
and  by  virtue  of  change,  so  that  the  doctrine 
also  must  change  its  form  as  the  life  changes, 
but  must  nevertheless  keep  its  unity  precisely 
m  so  far  as  the  changing  life  means  something 
coherent  and  worthy. 

And  therefore,  when  we  ask  how  the 
modern  man,  and  how  the  future  social  order, 
stands   related   to   the    Christian    ideas,    our 

411 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

question  really  concerns  the  worth  and  the 
coherence  which  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
life  still  retains,  and  will  retain,  in  the  midst 
of  our  vast  and  distracted  modern  world. 
Such  a  question  is  at  best  not  easy  to  answer. 
But  our  foregoing  studies  have  furnished  a 
preparation  for  an  attempt  towards  such  an 
answer.  I  believe  that  some  such  preparation 
is  needed,  and  will  grow  more  and  more  nec- 
essary the  more  complex  the  situation  of 
modern  civilization  becomes. 


VIII 

Closely  related  to  the  effort  to  reduce  our 
problem  of  Christianity  to  the  simple  choice 
of  alternative,  "Either  Christianity  is  a 
revealed  religion,  or  else  it  is  a  mere  system 
of  morality,"  there  stands  another  interpre- 
tation of  the  same  problem  with  which  you 
are  all  familiar.  This  interpretation  often 
expresses  itself  thus:  **The  modern  man's 
relation  to  a  Christian  creed  must  depend 
upon  his  answer  to  the  question,  "Is,  or  is 
not  the  man  Jesus,  the  founder  of  Christianity, 

412 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

identical  with  the  Christ,  the  God-Man, 
whom  Christian  tradition  has  acknowledged 
as  Lord  .^"  The  modern  man's  choice,  when 
thus  interpreted,  lies  between  the  two  alter- 
native theses  :-- Either  Jesus,  the  founder  of 
Christianity,  was  a  man,  and  only  a  man; 
or  else  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  that  is,  was  the' 
God-Man." 

Many  apologists  insist  that  this  one  choice 
between  alternatives  may  be  said  to  cover  all 
that  is   most  important  in   the  problem  of 
Christianity.     For    if    the    modern    man,    in 
presence  of  this  choice,  decides  that  in  his 
opinion  Jesus   was   the   Christ,   the  decision 
brings  him  into  close  touch  with  all  the  best- 
known   traditions   of  historical    Christianity. 
The  Christian  religion  is  then  acknowledged 
to  be  a  divine  process ;    and  the  work  of  the 
divine   founder   becomes   the   one   source   of 
human    salvation.     On    the    other   hand,    if 
Jesus  was  a  man  and  only  a  man,  then,  how- 
ever exalted  his  human  life,  or  his  doctrine, 
may  have  been,  he  stands  upon  essentially  the' 
same    level    as    Socrates    or    as    Confucius. 

413 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

For  in  that  case  he  taught  as  an  individual 
man,  addressing  his  individual  fellow-men ; 
and  the  worth  of  his  teaching  must  vary  with 
the  needs  of  persons  and  of  periods.  So  the 
problem  of  the  modern  man  is  stated  by  many 
Christian  apologists. 

As  a  fact,  the  choice  between  alternatives 
which  is  thus  formulated  can  be  neglected  by 
no  serious  student  of  our  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  also  true,  however,  that  the 
choice  cannot  justly  be  made  unless  one  takes 
account  of  considerations  which  tend  greatly 
to  widen  our  vista,  and  which  define  possi- 
bilities whereof  those  who  beUeve  in  Christian 
tradition  seldom  take  adequate  account. 

In  answer,  then,  to  the  challenge:  ''Either 
you  must  believe  that  the  founder  of  Chris- 
tianity was  only  a  man,  or  else  you  must 
accept  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  the  divine  man," 
—  we  must  first  reply,  I  think,  by  an  assertion 
which  is  as  capable  of  a  reasonable  historical 
confirmation  as  it  is  often,  at  the  present 
moment,  neglected.  It  is  indeed  no  new  as- 
sertion, and  many  in  the  past  have  made  it. 

414 


MODERN  MIND  AND  CHRISTIANITY 
But  our  foregoing  study,  I  think,  helps  us  to 
view  this  assertion  in  a  new  light. 

IX 

Whatever  may  be  the  truth  about  the 
person  of  Christ,  and  about  the  supposed 
supernatural  origin  of  Christianity,  the  human 
source  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life,  and 
also  the  human  source  of  all  the  later  Chris- 
tologies,  must  be  found  in  the  early  Christian 
community  itself.  The  Christian  religion,  in 
its  early  form,  is  the  work  and  expression  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

By  the  early  Christian  community  I  mean, 
first  of  all,   the  company   of  disciples   who, 
after  the  Master's  death,  assembled  in  Galilee, 
and  who,  a  little  later,  returned  to  Jerusalem.' 
This  community   was  absorbed,   at  first,  in 
what  it  knew  of  the  earliest  visions  of  the 
risen  Lord ;    and  it  narrated  these  visions  in 
forms  which   the  well-known  gospel   legends 
preserved  for  later  Christian  ages.     This  com- 
munity also  cherished  the  memory  and  the 
reported    sayings    of    the    Master.     Erelong 

415 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

this  same  community  began  to  experience 
those  phenomena  of  collective  religious  fervor 
which  it  regarded  as  the  work  of  the  divine 
Spirit.  It  began  its  own  task  of  propagating 
its  faith.  It  made  converts.  Of  these  con- 
verts the  greatest  was  the  apostle  Paul.  Now 
this  community,  —  not  Paul  himself  as  an 
individual,  —  not  any  one  man,  but  this 
community,  acting  under  the  inspiration  of 
its  leaders,  —  is  the  source  of  all  later  forms 
of  Christian  life  and  faith.  fJn  this  sense  it  is 
true  that  this  community  is  the  real  human 
founder  of  Christianity^' 

It  is  of  course  also  true  that  Jesus  during 
his  life  had,  as  an  individual  man,  taught  a 
doctrine,  and  done  a  work,  which  made  this 
first  Christian  community  possible.  In  this 
sense  it  is  correct  to  say  that  the  man  Jesus, 
in  so  far  as  he  was  merely  an  individual  man, 
is  the  founder  of  Christianity.  But  when  we 
say  this,  we  must  add  that,  so  far  as  we  know 
of  the  teachings  of  the  man  Jesus,  they  did 
not  make  explicit  what  proved  to  be  precisely 
the  most  characteristic  feature  of  Christianity, 

416 


^'^k^^^^^^md 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

—  namely,  the  mission  and  the  doctrine  of 
the  Christian  community  itself.  The  doc- 
trine of  Christian  love,  as  the  Master  taught 
it,  is  not  yet,  in  explicit  form,  the  whole 
Christian  doctrine  of  life.  For  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  is  a  doctrine  which  is  unintel- 
ligible apart  from  the  ideal  of  the  universal 
community. 

It  is  of  course  true,  that  had  it  not  been  for 
the  life  and  for  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  and 
had  not  the  visions  of  the  risen  Lord  been 
seen  and  held  in  memory,  there  would  have 
been  no  Christian  religion,  and  nothing  for 
Paul  to  discover  or  to  teach. 

But  it  is  also  true  that  Christianity  not  only 
is  a  religion  founded  upon  the  idea  of  the 
divine  community,  —  the  Church,  —  but  also 
is  a  religion  whose  human  founder  was  rather 
the  community  itself,   acting  as  a  spiritual 
unity,  — than    it    was    any    individual    man 
whatever.     Our  doctrine  of  the  two  levels  of 
human  existence  has  explained  what  such  a 
view  of  the  matter  means. 
We  know  how  the  Church  interpreted  its 


2b 


417 


iSftf'^-fr -■-"'- 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

own  origin  when  it  held  that  its  actual  origi- 
nator was  no  mere  irtdividual  man  at  all. 
In  this  opinion  the  Church  was,  as  I  hold, 
literally  right,  however  you  interpret  the 
human  person  of  Jesus. 

The  modern  man,  therefore,  need  not  accept 
the  early  Christology  of  the  Church  in  order 
to  recognize  that,  since  the  founding  of  Chris- 
tianity was  due  to  the  united  spirit  of  the  early 
Christian  community,  this  founding  was  not 
wholly,  or  mainly,  due  to  any  individual  man 
whatever. 

Meanwhile,  since  the  human  founder  Jesus 
gave  the  stimulus,  the  signal,  —  or,  to  use 
the  now  current  Bergsonian  language,  set 
in  motion  the  vital  impetus,  without  which 
the  Christian  community,  as  this  potent  and 
creative  human  and  spiritual  union,  would 
never  have  come  into  existence,  —  we  can 
indeed  also  say  that  the  man  Jesus  was,  in 
this  sense,  the  founder  of  Christianity.  But 
we  cannot  say  that,  speaking  of  Jesus  as  an 
individual  man,  we  know  that  he  explicitly 
intended  to  found  the  Christian  Church.     For 

418 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

he  simply  did  not  make  expHcit  what  he  taught 
about  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  as  a  divine 
community.      And    the    foundation     of    the 
Church,  as  a  community,  depends,  humanly 
speaking,  upon  psychological  motives  —  upon 
motives   belonging  not   merely  to  individual 
but  also  to  social  psychology  —  upon  motives 
which  we  cannot  fathom  by  means  of  any 
soundings  that  our  historical  materials  or  our 
knowledge  of  social  psychology  permit  us  to 
make.     We  shall  presumably  never  know  the 
true  sources  of  the  Easter  visions  until  we  have 
learned    the  whole  truth  about  that   second, 
that  higher,  level  of  human    existence  upon 
whose  reahty  I  have  insisted.     The  psychology 
of  the  origins  of  Christian  experience  is  thus 
social  and  is  not  an  individual  psychology. 

These  considerations  with  regard  to  Christian 
origins  teach  us  that,  deep  as  the  historical 
mystery  of  the  Christian  origins  remains, 
and  will  presumably  for  countless  ages  remain, 
neither  the  modern  man  of  to-day,  nor  the 
men  of  the  future,  can  be  limited  to  the 
simple  choice  which  the  apologists  emphasize. 

419 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

X 

But,  as  you  will  say,  What  bearing  have 
such  historical  comments  upon  the  future 
prospects  of  the  Christian  faith  ? 

I  answer:  These  considerations  tend  to 
show  us :  first,  that  the  Christian  ideas  do 
not  demand  for  their  interpretation  and 
appreciation  any  one  theory  regarding  the 
natural  or  supernatural  origin  of  this  religion; 
and  secondly,  that,  in  consequence,  these 
ideas  run  no  risk  of  being  neglected  or  forgotten 
in  consequence  of  the  inevitable  modern 
transformations  of  our  ideas  regarding  nature 
and  the  supernatural. 

Without  sinking  to  the  level  of  a  mere 
moralism,  Christianity  presents  to  us  a  view 
of  life  which  indeed  arouses  profound  meta- 
physical inquiries;  but  which  yet  appeals 
to  the  most  concrete  and  vital  and  present 
moral  and  religious  interests.  And  without 
staking  its  existence  upon  the  truth  of  any 
legends,  Christianity,  when  fairly  interpreted, 
presents  to  us,  in  the  symbolism  of  its  Chris- 

420 


^%  X^.,s^^.,Url^ifi 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

tological  myths,  a  doctrine  which  is  capable 
of  the  most  manifold  religious  and  metaphys- 
ical interpretations,  but  which  also  expresses 
the  perfectly  human  and  the  verifiable  experi- 
ences that  the  loyal  life  everywhere  illustrates. 
We  have  seen  that  the  social  motives  to 
which  Christianity  appeals  are  rooted  in  the 
very   depths   of  our  nature.     They   are   the 
motives  which  make  us  naturally  dependent 
upon  fife  in  communities,  and  morally  lost 
and  helpless  without  loyalty.     These  motives 
will   not  pass  away.     Christianity  was  that 
one  among  the  religions  which  first  invented 
an  effective  way  of  making  the  ideal  of  loyalty 
to  the  universal  community  not  only  impres- 
sive, but  so  transforming  that  for  centuries 
the  European  world  was  under  the  sway  of  the 
institutions  which  gave  expression  to  this  ideal. 
These    institutions    are    now    threatened; 
and  the  historical  outcome  of  the  vast  con- 
flicts   upon    which    they    are    now    entering 
cannot  be  foreseen.     Moreover,  in  order  to 
give  to  its  doctrine  of  life  not  only  a  social 
expression,  but  an  internal  consistency  and 

421 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

intensity  of  religious  meaning,  Christianity, 
in  its  early  days,  recorded  its  legends  and 
framed  its  creeds.  Many  of  the  resulting 
groups  of  ideas  already  seem  strangers  in  our 
modern  world ;  and  they  will  probably  seem 
to  future  generations,  —  as  time  goes  on,  — 
less  and  less  literally  acceptable.  But  now 
that  we  have  seen  something  of  what  momen- 
tous and  literally  true,  and  permanently 
needed,  spiritual  discoveries  concerning  hu- 
man Hfe  and  its  salvation  the  symbolism  of 
these  legends  and  of  these  creeds  originally 
expressed,  we  are  able  to  judge  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  upon  its  own  immortal  merits, 
and  to  separate  this  judgment  from  any  one 
theory,  either  about  metaphysical  or  about 
historical  truth. 

Christianity  will  always  arouse  new  critical 
and  philosophical  inquiries ;  its  creeds  will 
probably  change  unceasingly;  its  present 
institutions  may  in  time  wholly  pass  away. 
But  in  the  new  human  life  of  the  future  ages, 
love  and  loyalty  will  not  lose,  but  grow  in 
human  value,  so  long  as  man  remains  alive, 

422 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

And  the  calm  stern  conscience  wherewith 
the  Christian  faith  has  always  condemned 
both  our  natural  chaos  of  passion  and  our 
graver  disloyalties,  —  this  conscience  will  be 
increasingly  needed;  needed,  not  because 
men  fear,  but  because  men  grow  more  self- 
possessed  and  clear  in  vision.  The  more  rea- 
sonable, the  more  critical,  the  more  far-seeing, 
and  the  more  humane  men  become,  the  more 
will  the  ideas  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  irrevocable  guilt  of  dis- 
loyalty appeal,  not  to  the  morbid  moods,  but 
to  the  resolute  will  and  the  clear  self-con- 
sciousness of  the  enlightened  man  of  the 
future. 

Furthermore,  as  the  spirit  of  science  extends 
its  influence,  loyalty  to  the  common  insight 
and  to  the  growth  of  knowledge  will  become 
prominent  in  the  consciousness  of  the  civihzed 
man.  For  the  scientific  spirit  is  indeed  one 
of  the  noblest  and  purest  forms  of  loyalty. 

The  Christian  virtues,  then,  will  flourish 
in  the  civilization  of  the  future,  if  indeed  that 
civihzation    itself    flourishes.     For    the    more 

423 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

complex  its  constitution,  and  the  swifter  and 
vaster  its  social  changes,  the  more  will  that 
civilization  need  love,  and  loyalty,  and  the 
grace  of  spiritual  unity,  and  the  will  and  the 
conscience  which  the  Christian  ideas  have 
defined,  and  counselled,  and  that  atoning 
conflict  with  evil  wherein  the  noblest  expres- 
sion of  the  spirit  must  always  be  found. 

The  Christian  virtues  will  survive  if  hu- 
manity triumphs  in  its  contest  with  its  own 
deepest   needs  and  in  its  struggle  after  its 
own    highest    goods.     But    if    the    Christian 
virtues  survive,  they  will  find  their  rehgious 
expression.     And  this  expression  will  be  at- 
tended with  the  knowledge  that,  in  its  his- 
torical origins,  the  religion  of  the  future  will 
be  continuous  with  and  dependent  upon  the 
earhest    Christianity ;     so    that    the    whole 
growth  and  vitahty  of  the  religion  of  the  future 
will  depend  upon  its  harmony  with  the  Chris- 
tian spirit.     Whatever  becomes  of  the  present 
creeds  and  the  present  institutions,  the  man 
of  the  future,  looking  out  over  the  wide  vista 
of  the  ages,  will  know  how  near  he  is,  despite 

424 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

all  time  and  change,  to  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

So  much,  and  only  so  much,  our  survey  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  permits  us  to 
assert  concerning  the  relation  of  the  Christian 
spirit  to  the  modem  mind,  without  essay- 
ing the  grave  tasks  of  a  philosophical  the- 
ory of  the  real  world.  Herewith  the  first 
part  of  our  task  is  done.  The  second  part 
calls  for  another  method. 


425 


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«*THE  GOSPEL  OF   IDEALS" 

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loyal  at  all,  or  wise.  Moreover,  true  loyalty  must  express  itself  practi- 
cally, in  the  way  of  a  man's  life,  in  his  deeds.  Cherished  without  rea- 
soning, and  to  no  really  practical  purpose,  it  avails  nothing.  The  drift 
of  circumstances  that  may  make  a  man  of  high  and  strong  personal 
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readers." — A^ew  York  Times. 

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the  outside  world.  Believing  that  certain  present-day  conditions  and 
tendencies  indicate  a  lowering  of  individual  and  national  standards, 
Professor  Royce  gives  himself  resolutely  to  the  task  of  remedial  and 
constructive  criticism.  His  programme  of  reform  is  summed  up  in  the 
single  phrase  —  the  cultivation  of  a  spirit  of  loyalty.  .  .  .  His  work  is 
immediately  and  concretely  inspiring  to  the  man  not  at  all  concerned 
with  the  subtleties  of  metaphysical  disquisition,  but  very  much  concerned 
in  the  affairs  of  every-day  existence.  It  helps  him  to  appreciate  the 
poverty  of  egotistical  ideals  —  such  as  the  ideal  of  power  —  and  it 
plainly  propounds  means  whereby  life  may  be  made  really  worth 
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manity in  it.  It  comes  from  the  heart  of  a  man,  from  the  big  heart  of  a 
big  man,  from  a  fine  loyal  soul.  Fichte  never  spoke  with  greater  fer- 
vor and  eloquence  than  does  this  idealist  of  Cambridge,  and  it  is  to  be 
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THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


LECTURES   DELIVERED  AT  THE   LOWELL 
INSTITUTE  IN  BOSTON,  AND  AT  MAN- 
CHESTER   COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


BY 

JOSIAH   ROYCE 

D.Sc.  (University  of  Oxford) 

PKOrESSOR   OP  THE   HISTORY    OF   PHILOSOPHY 
IN   HABVABD   UNIVBR8ITT 


1 


VOLUME  II 
THE  REAL   WORLD  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAS 


Neto  gork 
THE  MACMILL^^N   COMPANY 

1914 


»   *  > 


•     ;•,*,;,  M^  rights  rcSorree 
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COPTBIOHT,   1918, 

bt  the  macmillan  company. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  May,  1913.     Reprinted 
April,  1914. 


THE  PKOBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


X*  S*.  Ol5Wl»g■C^..-;B«^«rict  ik  SmltK  Co. 


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THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

N«W  YORK  •    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limitkd 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNB 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 
VOLUME  II 

THE  REAL  WORLD  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN 

IDEAS 


LECTURE  IX 

The  Community  and  the  Time-Process. 


LECTURE  X 

The  Body  and  the  Members    . 


PAoa 
1 


55 


LECTURE  XI 

^    PERCEPTipN,  Conception,  and  Interpretation        .    107 


LECTURE  Xn 

#>    The  Will  to  Interpret     . 


165 


LECTURE  Xm 

The  ^orld  of  Interpretation 

/  LECTURE  XIV 

The  Doctrine  of  Signs 


.     223 


277 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 


LECTURE  XV 
The  Historical  and  the  Essential 


LECTURE  XVI 
Summary  and  Conclusion  . 


PAQB 

827 


IX 

THE  COMMUNFTY  AND  THE  TIME-PROCESS 


S81 


J^ 


LECTURE  IX 

THE  COMMUNITY  AND  THE  TIME-PROCESS 

rilHE  present  situation  of  the  Philosophy 
^    of  Religion    is   dominated    by   motives 
and  tendencies  which  are  at  once  inspiring 
and  confusing.     It  is  the  task  of  a  student 
of  this  branch  of  philosophy  to  do  whatever 
he  can  towards  clarifying  our  outlook.     Some 
of  our  recent  leaders  of  opinion  have  turned 
our  attention  to  new  aspects  of  human  expe- 
rience, and  have  enriched  philosophy  with  a 
wealth  of  fascinating  intuitions.     These  con- 
tributions to  the  philosophy  of  our  time  have 
obvious  bearings  upon  the  interests  of  reli- 
gion.    If  religion  depended  solely  upon  intui- 
tion and  upon  novelty,  our  age  would  already 
have  proved  its  right  to  be  regarded  as  a 
period  of  great  advances  in  religious  insight. 

In  fact,  however,  religion  is  concerned,  not 
merely  with  our  experience,  but  also  with 
our j^l.  The  true  lover^f  religion  needs  a 
conscience,   as   well   as   a   joy   in   living  — a 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

I  coherent  plan  of  action  as  well  as  a  vital  im- 
pulse.    Now,    in   the   present   phase   of   the 
philosophy  of  religion,  the  religious  aspect  of 
the  conscience  is,   as  I  believe,  too  seldom    | 
made  a  central  object  of  inquiry.     The  in- 
terests of  a  coherent  plan  of  life  are  too  much 
neglected.     I   believe  that  both  our  ethical 
and  our  distinctly  religious  concerns  tend  to 
suffer  in  consequence  of   these  tendencies  of 
recent  thought  to   which  I   thus   allude.     I 
believe  that  much  can  be  done  to  profit  by   j 
the  novelties  and  by  the  intuitions  of  our  day, 
without  losing  ourselves  in  the  wilderness  of 
caprices    into    which    recent    discussion    has 
invited  us  to  make  the  future  home  of  our 
philosophy. 


Because  I  view  the  problems  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  religion  in  this  general  way,  I  have 
undertaken,  in  the  foregoing  lectures,  a  study 
of  the  problem  of  Christianity  which  has 
been  intended  to  accomplish  three  distinct, 
but  closely  connected  tasks  :  — 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

First,  in  a  fashion  that  has  shown,  as  I 
hope,  some  genuine  sympathy  with  the  ten- 
dencies now  prevalent,  both  in  the  whole 
field  of  philosophy,  and,  in  particular,  in  the 
study  of  religion,  I  have  tried  to  interpret 
some  of  the  more  obviously  human  and 
practical  aspects  of  the  religious  beliefs  of 
our  fathers.  In  other  words,  I  have  ap- 
proached the  problem  of  Christianity  from 
the  side,  not  of  metaphysics  and  of  traditional 
dogmas,  but  of  religious  life  and  of  human 
experience. 

Secondly,  even  in  using  this  mode  of  ap- 
proach, I  have  laid  stress  upon  the  fact  that 
Christianity  —  viewed  as  a  doctrine  of  life 
—  is  not  merely  a  religion  of  experience  and 
of  sentiment,  but  also  a^  religion  whose  main 
stress  is  laid  upon  the  unity  and  the  coherence 
of  the  common  experience  of  the  faithful,  and 
upon  the  judgment  which  a  calm  and  far- 
seeing  conscience  passes  upon  the  values  of 
life.  The  freedom  of  spirit  to  which  Chris- 
tianity, in  the  course  of  its  centuries  of  teach- 
ing,  has   trained    the   civilizations    which    it 

5 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

has  influenced,  has  been  the  freedom  which 
loves  both  a  wide  outlook  and  a  well-knit  plan 
of  action.  In  brief,  I  have  insisted  that 
Christianity,  whatever  its  metaphysical  basis 
may  be,  and  however  rich  may  be  the  wealth 
of  intuitions  which  it  has  opened  to  its  fol- 
lowers, has  all  the  seriousness  of  purpose,  and 
all  the  strenuousness  of  will,  which  make  it 
indeed  a  religion  of  loyalty. 

Thirdly,  I  have,  from  the  outset,  said  that 
our  view  of  the  mission  and  the  truth  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  would  not  be  com- 
plete without  a  study  of  the  metaphysical 
basis  of  the  Christian  ideas. 

In  the  last  two  lectures  we  have  considered 
how  the  modern  mind  stands  related  to  the 
human  interests  which  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life  expresses.  Our  fathers,  however,  held 
Christianity  to  be,  not  merely  a  plan  for  the 
salvation  of  man,  but  a  revelation  concern- 
ing the  origin  and  fate  of  the  whole  cosmos. 
From  this  point  onwards,  in  our  study,  we 
must  face  anew  the  problem  which  the  old 
faith  regarded  as  solved.     We,  too,  must  take 

6 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

account  of  the  universe.  We  must  consider 
what  is  the  consistent  position  for  the  modern 
mind  to  accept  when  the  inquiry  arises: 
Has  the  Christian  doctrine  of  hfe  a  more  than 
human  meaning  and  foundation  ?  Does  this 
doctrine  express  a  truth,  not  only  about  man, 
but  about  the  whole  world,  and  about  God  ? 

n 

The  modern  man  has  long  since  learned  not 
to  confine  himself  to  a   geocentric    view    of 
the  universe,  nor  to  an  anthropocentric  view 
of  the   affairs   of   this   planet   of  ours.     For 
minds  trained  as  ours  now  are,  it  has  become 
inevitable  to  imagine  how  human  concerns 
would  seem  to  us  if  we  heard  of  them  from 
afar,   as   dwellers   in    other   solar   or   stellar 
systems  might  be  supposed  to  hear  of  them. 
We  have  been  taught  to  remember  that  at 
some  time,  -  a  time  not    nearly   so   distant 
from  us  in  the  future  as  the  Miocene  division 
of  the  Tertiary  period  is  now  distant  from  us 
m  the  past,  man  will  probably  be  as  extinct 
as  is  now  the  sabre-toothed  tiger.     But  such 

7 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

considerations  as  these  arouse  further  queries 
about  Christian  doctrine  —  queries  which  no 
modern  mind  can  wholly  ignore.  Let  all  be 
admitted  which  we  urged  at  the  last  time 
regarding  the  close  relation  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  to  the  deepest  needs  of  human- 
ity. Then  this  will  indeed  show  that  Chris- 
tianity, viewed  simply  as  such  a  doctrine  of 
life,  need  not  fear  social  changes,  so  long  as 
civiUzed  man  endures;  and  will  remain  as  a 
spiritual  guide  of  future  generations,  however 
vast  the  revolutions  to  which  they  may  be 
subject,  so  long  as  the  future  generations 
view  life  largely   and  seriously. 

But  such  considerations  will  not  meet  all 
the  legitimate  questions  of  a  philosophy  of 
religion.  For  religion,  although  it  need  not 
depend  for  its  appeal  to  the  human  heart  upon 
solving  the  problems  of  the  cosmos,  inevi- 
tably leads  to  a  constantly  renewed  interest 
in  those  problems.  Let  it  be  granted  that  the 
salvation  of  mankind  indeed  requires  some 
form  of  religion  whose  essential  ideas  are  in 
harmony  with  the  Christian  ideas  which  we 

8 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 
have  examined ;   still,  that  fact  will  not  quite 
supply  an  answer  to  our  natural  inquiries,  if 
indeed  mankind  is  destined  simply  to  fail,'- 
as  the  sabre-toothed  tiger  failed.     And  if  man- 
kind, in  the  vast  cosmos,  is  as  much  alone 
amongst  the  beings  that  people  the  universe 
as  the  earth  seems  to  be  alone  amongst  the 
countless   worlds,  -  what   shall   it   profit   us 
if  we  seem  to  be  saving  our  own  souls  for  a 
time,  but  actually  remain,  after  all,  what  we 
were  before,  -  utterly  insignificant  incidents 
m  a  world-process  that  neither  needs  men  nor 
heeds  them  ? 

Traditional  theology  could  long  ignore  such 
considerations,  because  it  could  centre  all  the 
universe  about  the  earth  and  man.     But  the 
modern  man  must  think  of  his  kind  as  thus 
really  related  to  an  immeasurably  vast  cos- 
mic  process,  at  whose  centre  our  planet  does 
not  stand,  and  in  whose  ages  our  brief  human 
^ives  play  a  part  as  transient,  relatively  speak- 
ing, as  is,  for  our  own  eyes,  the  flickering  of 
the  northern  lights. 
The  task  to  which  we  must  now  devote 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ourselves  is  thus  determined,  for  our  age,  and 
for  the   modern   man,  by   the  enlarged  per- 
spective in  which  we  have  to  view  human 
history.     Our  doctrine  of  life  is  not  so  readily 
to  be  connected  with  our  picture  of  the  uni- 
verse as  would  be  the  case  if  we  still  lived 
under   the   heavenly    spheres   of   an   ancient 
cosmology.     Yet  we  shall  find  that  the  differ- 
ence  which  is  here  in  question  will  not  prove 
to  be  so  great  in  its  meaning  as  the  quanti- 
tative differences   between  the   ancient   and 
modern  world  seem,  at  first,  to  imply.     Our 
fathers  also  faced  the  problem  of  the  infinity 
of  the  universe,   much    as  they  often   tried 
to  ignore  or  to  minimize  that  problem.     And, 
in  the  spiritual  world,  mere  quantity,  how- 
ever vast,  is  not  the  hardest  of  obstacles  to 
overcome. 

Ill 

In  any  case,  however,  the  part  of  our  under- 
taking upon  which  we  thus  enter,  corresponds 
to  those  chapters  of  traditional  theology  which 
dealt  with  the  existence  and  nature  of  God, 

10 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

and   with   God's  relation   to  the  world,   and 
with   the  origin   and   destiny   of   the  human 
individual.     Our  own  attempt  to  study  these 
well-worn  problems  begins  with  one,  and  per- 
haps with  only  one,  advantage  over  the  best- 
known    traditional    modes    of    expounding    a 
philosophical  theology.     We,  namely,  set  out 
under  the  guidance  of  our  foregoing  study  of 
the    Christian    ideas.     Central    among   these 
ideas  is  that  of   the  Universal   Community. 
For  us,  then,  theology,  if  we  are  to  define 
any  theology  at  all,  must  depend   upon  the 
metaphysical   interpretation   and   foundation 
of  the  community.     If  that  ideal  of  one  be- 
loved and  united  community  of  all  mankind 
whose  religious  value  we  have  defended,  has 
a  basis,  not  merely  in  the  transient  interests 
of  us  mortals,  but  also  in  whatever  is  largest 
and  most  lasting  in  the  universe,  then  indeed 
the  doctrine  of  the  community  will  prove  to 
be  a  doctrine  about  the  being  and  nature  and 
manifestation  of  God;    and  our  estimate  of 
the  relation  of  the  modern  mind  to  the  spirit 
of  a  Christian  creed  will  be  altered  and  com- 

11 


/ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pleted  accordingly.  This  one  doctrine  will 
indeed  not  suffice  to  make  us  literal  followers 
of  tradition ;  but  it  will  bring  us  into  a  sym- 
pathy with  some  of  the  most  essential  features 
of  the  Christian  view  of  the  divine  being. 


IV 

What  interests  are  at  stake  when  this  as- 
pect of  the  problems  of  theology  is  emphasized, 
I  can  best  remind  you  by  recalling  the  fact 
which  we  mentioned  in  comparing  Buddhism 
and   Christianity  in  a  former  lecture.     The 
most    characteristic    feature    by    which    the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  stands  contrasted 
with  its  greatest  religious  rival,  we  found  to 
be  the  one  summarized  in  the  words  of  the 
creed:    "I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  the 
Holy   Catholic   Church,    the   communion   of 
saints."     In  our  former  lecture,  when  we  com- 
mented upon  these  words,  we  laid  no  stress 
upon  the  special  traditions  of  the  historical 
Church.     We  considered  only  the  universally 
human   significance   of  the   ideal   which   has 
always  constituted  the  vital  principle  of  the 

12 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

historical   Church,  —  far    away    as    the   ade- 
quate embodiment  of  that  ideal  in  any  visible 
human  institution  still  seems  to  be.     At  the 
present  stage  of  our  inquiry,  —  since  we  are, 
of  necessity,  entering  for  the  time  the  world 
of  metaphysical  abstractions,  we  have  also  to 
abstract   from    still    another    aspect   of   the 
meaning  which  the  words  of  the  creed  in- 
tend to  convey.     For  neither  the  historical 
Church,    nor  the  distinctively   human   ideal 
which  it  expresses,  shall  be,  in   these  meta- 
physical lectures,  at  the  centre  of  our  attention. 
We  are  here  to  ask :   For  what  truth,  if  any- 
regarding  the  whole  nature  of  things,  does 
that  article  of  the  creed  stand  ?     Our  answer 
must  be  found,  if  at  all,  in  some  metaphysical 
theory  of  the  community  and  of  its  relation, 
if  such   relation  it  possesses,   to   the  divine 
being.     In  other  words,  the  central  problem 
in  our  present  attempt  at  a  theology  must 
be  that  problem  which  traditional  Christian 
theology   has   so   strangely    neglected,  —  the 
problem  of  what  the  religious  consciousness 
has  called  the  Holy  Spirit. 

13 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


The  philosophy  of  religion,  in  dealing  with 
the  problem  of  Christianity,  has  often  elabo- 
rately expounded  and  criticised  the  arguments 
for  the  existence  of  God.     Such  philosophical 
arguments  have  in  general  to  do  with  the  con- 
cept of  the  Deity  viewed  quite  apart  from  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.     In  other 
cases,  and  for  obvious  historical  reasons,  the 
philosophy  of  religion  has  had  much  to  say 
about  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos.     This  doc- 
trine, when  treated  as  a  part  of  Christian 
theology,  is  usually  taken  to  be  the  theory  of 
the  second  person  of  the  Trinity.     But   the 
traditional  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  neg- 
lected by  the  early  theologians  of  the  Church, 
even  when  the  creeds  were  still  in  the  forma- 
tive period  of  their  existence,  has  remained 
until  this  day  in  the  background  of  inquiry, 
both  for  the  theologians  and  for  the  philoso- 
phers.    A  favorite  target  for  hostile,  although 
often  inarticulate,  criticism  on  the  part  of  the 
opponents  of  tradition,  and  a  frequent  object 

14 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

of  reverential,  but  confessedly  problematic 
and  often  very  vague,  exposition  on  the  part 
of  the  defenders  of  the  faith,  —  the  arti- 
cle of  the  creed  regarding  the  Holy  Spirit 
is,  I  believe,  the  one  matter  about  which 
most  who  discuss  the  problem  of  Christian- 
ity have  least  to  say  in  the  way  of  definite 
theory. 

Yet,  if  I  am  right,  —  this  is,  in  many  re- 
spects, the  really  distinctive  and  therefore  the 
capital  article  of  the  Christian  creed,  so  far 
as  that  creed  suggests  a  theory  of  the  divine 
nature.      This   article,    then,   should   be   un- 
derstood, if  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  in  its 
most   human   and  vital  of  features,  is  to  be 
understood  at  all.     And    this   article   should 
be  philosophically  expounded  and   defended, 
if  any  distinctively  Christian   article   of   the 
creed  is  to  find  a  foundation  in  a  rationally 
defensible   metaphysical   theory   of   the   uni- 
verse. 

Apart  from  the  doctrine  of  the  ideal  com- 
munity, and  of  the  divine  Spirit  as  consti- 
tuting the  unity  and  the  life  of  this  community, 

15 


tWSMHI 


afc  ^wJiiiiiiiiMii'fiiiriiiiiii  iiif iitMyiiiiifiagiBaii 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Theism  can  be,  as  for  many  centuries  it  has 
been,  defined  and  defended.     But  such  theism, 
which  "knows  not  so  much  as  whether  there 
is  any  Holy  Ghost,"  is  not  distinctively  Chris- 
tian in  its  meaning.     And  the  Logos-doctrine, 
except  when  viewed  in  unity  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Spirit,  is  indeed  what  some  of  its  re- 
cent hostile   critics  (such  as  Harnack)  have 
taken  it  to  be,  -  a  thesis  of  Greek  philoso- 
phy, and   not  a  characteristically   Christian 
opinion.    The  Logos-doctrine  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  as  we  earlier  saw,  is  indeed  no  mere 
following    of    Greek    metaphysics;    for    the 
Fourth  Gospel  identifies  the  Logos  with  the 
spirit  of  the  community.     Here,  then,  in  this 
doctrine   of  the   spirit,   lies  the    really    cen- 
tral idea  of  any  distinctively  Christian  meta- 

physic. 

To  approach  the  problems  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion  from  the  side  of  the  metaphysical 
basis  of  the  idea  of  the  community  is  there- 
fore, I  believe,  to  undertake  a  task  as  momen- 
tous as  it  is  neglected. 


16 


r -  —-^  --  -.^—-j.~^g^  iiiiinnnii  Mt 


itiMiiViiiiahiiiiaiiiiiiia^iiSJi 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 


VI 

Moreover,  as  we  shall  soon  find,  this  mode 
of   beginning  the   metaphysical  part  of  our 
task  promises  to  reheve  us,  for  the  time,  from 
the  need  of  using  some  terms  and  of  repeating 
some   discussions,    which   recent   controversy 
may  well  have  made  wearisome  to  many  of 
us.     The    altogether    too    abstractly    stated 
contrast  between  Monism  and  Pluralism  — 
a  contrast  which  fills  so  large  a  place  in  the 
polemical  metaphysical  writings  of  the  day, 
does  not  force  itself  to  the  front,  in  our  minds 
and  in  our  words,  when  we  set  out  to  inquire 
into  the  real  basis  of  the  idea  of  the  commu- 
nity.    For  a  community  immediately  presents 
itself  to  our  minds  both  as  one  and  as  manv  • 
and  unless  it  is  both  one  and  many,  it  is  no 
community  at  all.     This  fact  does  not,  by 
itself,  solve  the  problem  of  the  One  and  the 
Many.     But  it  serves  to  remind  us  how  un- 
true to  fife  is  the  way  in  which  that  problem 
is  frequently  stated. 
In  fact,  as  I  believe,  the  idea  of  the  com- 


VOL.  II  —  C 


17 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

munity,  suggested  to  us  by  the  problems  of 
human  social  life,  but  easily  capable  of  a 
generalization  which  possesses  universal  im- 
portance, gives  us  one  of  our  very  best  indica- 
tions of  the  way  in  which  the  problem  of  the 
One  and  the  Many  is  to  be  solved,  and  of  the 
level  of  mental  life  upon  which  the  solution 
is  actually  accomplished. 

So  much  may  serve  as  a  general  indication 
of  the  nature  of  our  undertaking.  Let  me 
next  attempt  to  define  the  problem  of  the  com- 
munity more  precisely. 

VII 

Motives  which  are  as  familiar  as  they  are 
hard  to  analyze  have  convinced  us  all,  before 
we  begin  to  philosophize,  that  our  human 
world  contains  a  variety  of  individually  dis- 
tinct minds  or  selves,  and  that  some,  for  us 
decisively  authoritative,  principle  of  individua- 
tion, keeps  these  selves  apart,  and  forbids 
us  to  regard  their  various  lives  merely  as  in- 
cidents, or  as  undivided  phases  of  a  common 
Hfe.     This  conviction  —  the  stubborn  plural- 

18 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

ism  of  our  present  and  highly  cultivated  social 
consciousness  —  tends  indeed,  under  criticism, 
to  be  subject  to  various  doubts  and  modifica- 
tions, —  the  more  so  as,  in  case  we  are  once 
challenged  to  explain  who  we  are,  none  of  us 
find  it  easy  to  define  the  precise  boundaries 
of  the  individual  self,  or  to  tell  wherein  it 
differs  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  and,  in 
particular,  from  the  selves  of  other  men. 

But  to  all  such  doubts  our  social  common 
sense  replies  by  insisting  upon  three  groups 
of  facts.     These  facts  combine  to  show  that 
the   individual   human    selves    are   sundered 
from  one  another  by  gaps  which,  as  it  would 
seem,  are  in  some  sense  impassable. 
j  First,  in  this  connection,  our  common  sense 
insists  upon  the  empirical  sundering  of  the 
-feelings,  — that   is,  of   the   immediate   expe- 
riences of   various  human   individuals.     One 
man  does  not  feel,  and,  speaking  in  terms  of 
direct  experience,   cannot   feel,   the  physical 
pains  of  another  man.     Sympathy  may  try 
its  best  to  bridge  the  gulf  thus  established  by 
nature.     Love  may  counsel  me  to  view  the 

19 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pangs  of  my  fellow  as  if  they  were  my  own. 
But,  as  a  fact,  my  sensory  nerves  do  not  end 
in  my  fellow's  skin,  but  in  mine.     And  the 
physical  sundering  of    the   organisms   corre- 
sponds to  a  persistent  sundering  of  our  streams 
of   immediate   feeling.     Even   the   most   im- 
mediate and  impressive  forms  of  sympathy    . 
with  the  physical  pangs  of  another  human 
being  only  serve  the  more  to  illustrate  how 
our    various    conscious    Uves    are    thus    kept 
apart  by  gulfs  which  we  cannot  cross.     When 
a  pitiful  man  shrinks,   or  feels  faint,  or  is 
otherwise  overcome  with  emotion,  at  what  is 
called  "the  sight"  of  another's  suffering,— 
how  unlike  are  the  sufferings  of  the  shrinking 
or  terrified  or  overwhelmed  spectator,  and  the 
pangs  of  the  one  with  whom  he  is  said  to 
sympathize.     As  a  fact,  the  sympathizer  does 
not  feel  the  sufferer's  pain.     What  he  feels  is 
his  own  emotional  reverberation  at  the  sight  of 
its  symptoms.     That  is,  in  general,  something 
very  different,  both  in  quahty  and  in  intensity, 
from  what  the  injured  man  feels. 

We  appear,  then,  to  be  individuated  by  the 

20 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

diversity  and  the  separateness  of  our  stream.* 
of  immediate  feeling.  My  toothache  cannot 
directly  become  an  item  in  my  neighbor's  mind. 
Facts  of  this  sort  form  the  first  group  of  evi- 
dences upon  which  common  sense  depends  for 
its  pluralistic^vjew  of  the  world  of  human  selves. 
The  facts  of  the  second  group  are  closely 
allied  to  the  former,  but  he  upon  another 
level  of  individual  life,  —  namely,  upon  the 
le veJL of^ur_more  ^ organizei  ideas. 

"One  man,"  so  says  our  social  common 
sense,  "can  only  indirectly  discover  the  inten- 
tions, the  thoughts,  the  ideas,  of  another 
man."  Direct  telepathy,  if  it  ever  occurs  at 
all,  is  a  rare  and,  in  most  of  our  practical  re- 
lations, a  wholly  negligible  fact.  By  nature, 
every  man's  plans,  intents,  opinions,  and 
range  of  personal  experience  are  secrets,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  his  physical  organism  in- 
directly reveals  them.  His  fellows  can  learn 
these  secrets  only  through  his  expressive 
movements.  Control  your  expression,  keep 
silence,  avoid  the  unguarded  look  and  the 
telltale  gesture;    and   then  nobody  can  dis- 

21 


A 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

cover  what  is  in  your  mind.     No  man  can 
directly  read  the  hearts  of  his  fellows.     This 
seems,  for  our  common  sense,  to  be  one  of  the 
deepest-seated  laws  of  our  social  experience. 
It  is  often  expressed  as  if  it  were  not  merely 
an    empirical    law,    but    a    logical    necessity. 
How  could  I  possibly  possess  or  share  or  be- 
come conscious  of  the  thoughts  and  purposes 
of  another  mind,  unless  I  were  myself  identical 
with  that  mind  ?     So  says  our  ordinary  com- 
mon   sense.     The    very    supposition    that    I 
could  be  conscious  of  a  thought  or  of  an  in- 
tent which  was  all  the  while  actually  present 
to   the   consciousness   of   another   individual 
man,  is  often  regarded  as  a  supposition  not 
only  contrary  to  fact,  but  also  contrary  to 
reason.     Such  a  supposition,  it  is  often  said, 
would  involve  a  direct  self-contradiction. 

Otherwise  expressed,  the  facts  of  this  second 
group,  and  the  principles  which  they  exemplify, 
are  summed  up  by  asserting,  as  our  social 
common  sense  actually  asserts :  We  are  in- 
dividuated by  the  law  that  our  trains  of  con- 
scious   thought    and   purpose    are   mutually 

22 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

inaccessible  t^iroiigh  any  mode  of  direct  in- 
tuition. Each  oius  lives  within  the  charmed 
circle  of  his  own  conscious  will  and  meaning, 
—  each  of  us  is  more  or  less  clearly  the  object 
of  his  own  inspection,  but  is  hopelessly  beyond 
the  direct  observation  of  his  fellows. 

Of  separate  streams  of  feeling,  —  of  mu- 
tually inaccessible  and  essentially  secret  trains 
of  ideas,  —  we  men  are  thus  constituted.  By 
such  forms  and  by  such  structure  of  mental 
life,  by  such  divisions  which  no  human  power 
can  bring  into  one  unity  of  insight,  individual 
human  minds  are  forced  to  exist  together  upon 
terms  which  make  them,  in  so  far,  appear  to 
resemble  Leibnizian  monads.  Their  only  win- 
dows appear  to  be  those  which  their  physical  >" 
organisms  supply. 

The  third  group  of  facts  here  in  question  is 
the  group  upon  which  our  cultivated  social 
common  sense  most  insists  whenever  ethical 
problems  are  in  question ;  and  therefore  it  is 
precisely  this  third  group  of  facts  which  has 
most  interest  in  its  bearings  upon  the  idea  of 
the  community. 

79 


i/ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

^'We  are  all  members  one  of  another."     So 
says  the  doctrine  of  the  community.     "On 
the  contrary,"   so  our  social  common  sense 
insists :   "We  are  beings,  each  of  whom  has  a 
soul  of  his  own,  a  destiny  of  his  own,  rights 
of   his   own,  worth  of  his  own,  ideals  of  his 
own,   and   an   individual   life   in   which   this 
soul,  this  destiny,  these  rights,  these  ideals, 
get    their    expression.      No    other    man   can 
do   my   deed   for   me.     When   I  choose,  my 
choice  coalesces  with  the  voluntary  decision 
of  no  other  individual."     Such,  I  say,  is  the 
characteristic   assertion   to   which   this  third 
group  of  facts  leads  our  ordinary  social  plu- 
ralism. 

In  brief :  We  thus  seem  to  be  individuated 

by  our  deeds.  The  will  whereby  I  choose  my 
o^vTi  deed,  is  not  my  neighbor's  will.  My  act 
is  my  own.  Another  man  can  perform  an 
act  which  repeats  the  type  of  my  act,  or  which 
helps  or  hinders  my  act.  But  if  the  question 
arises  concerning  any  one  act :  Who  hath 
done  this  ?  —  such  a  question  admits  of  only 
one  true  answer.     Deeds  and  their  doers  stand 

24 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

in  one-one  correspondence.  Such  is  the  opin- 
ion of  our  cultivated  modern  ethical  common 
sense. 

Upon  this  individuation  of  the  selves  by 
their  deeds  appear  to  rest  all  the  other  just 
mentioned  ethical  aspects  of  our  modern  social  . 
pluralism.     As   we   mentioned   in   an   earlier 
lecture,  primitive  man  is  not  an  individualist. 
The  clear  consciousness  of  individual  rights, 
dignity,    worth,  and    responsibility  seems  to 
be  a  product   of  that   moral   cultivation   of 
which  we  have  now  frequently  spoken.     Ac- 
cording to  the  primitive  law  of  blood  revenge, 
it  is  the  community  and  not  the  individual 
that  suffers  for  a  deed.     The  consciousness 
that  my  deed  is  peculiarly  my  own  also  forms 
the  basis  for   that  cultivated   idea  of  sin  of   ■ 
which  we  found    Paul  making    use.     At  all 
events,  this  ethical  aspect  of  individual  self- 
consciousness  is  frequently  used  by  common 
sense  as  one  of  the  most  impressive  grounds  for 
doubting   any  philosophy  which   appears  to 
make   light  of  the  distinctness  of  the  social 
individuals. 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

VIII 

Nevertheless,  all  these  varieties  of  individual 
experience,  these  chasms  which  at  any  one 
present  moment  seem  to  sunder  mind  and 
mind,*  and  these  ethical  considerations  which 
have  taught  us  to  think  of  one  man  as  morally 
independent  of  another,  do  not  tell   us  the 
whole  truth  about  the  actual  constitution  of 
the  social  realm.     There  are  facts  that  seem 
to  show  that  these  many  are  also  one.  These, 
then,  are  facts  which  force  upon  us  the  prob- 
lem of  the  community. 

As   we   have   now   repeatedly   seen,   social 
cooperation  unquestionably  brings  into  exist- 
ence languages,    customs,   religions.      These, 
as  Wundt  declares,  are  indeed  psychological 
-creations.     Yet  a  language,  a  custom,  or  a 
religion  is  not  a  collection  of  discrete  psycho- 
logical phenomena,  each  of  which  corresponds 
to  some  separate  individual  mind  to  which 
that  one  mental  fact  belongs,  or  is  due.     Thus, 
the  English  language  is  a  mental  product,  — 
and   a   product  possessing  intelligent   unity. 

26 


COMMUNITY    AND    TIME-PROCESS 

Its  creator  must  be  regarded  as  also,  in  some 
sense,  a  single  intelligence.  But  the  creator 
of  the  English  language  was  no  mere  collec- 
tion of  Englishmen,  each  of  whom  added  his 
word  or  phrase  or  accent,  or  other  linguistic 
fact.  The  creator  of  English  speech  is  the 
English  people.  Hence  the  English  people 
is  itself  some  sort  of  mental  unit  with  a  mind 
of  its  own. 

The  countless  phenomena  which  Wundt  in 
his  Volkerpsychologie  brings  to  our  attention, 
constitute  a  philosophical  problem  which 
ought  to  be  only  the  more  carefully  studied 
in  case  one  regards  the  facts  upon  which  our 
ordinary  social  pluralism  rests  as  both  un- 
questionable and  momentous. 

For  if  indeed  men  are  sundered  in  their 
individual  lives  by  the  chasms  which  our 
social  common  sense  seems  to  make  so  ob- 
vious; if  they  live  in  mutually  inaccessible 
realms  of  conscious  solitude ;  how  comes  it  to 
pass  that,  nevertheless,  in  their  social  life, 
large  and  small  bodies  of  men  can  come  to  act 
as  if  one  common  intelligence  and  one  common 

27 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

will  were  using  the  individuals  as  its  almost 
helpless  instruments  ?  Here  is  indeed  a  great 
problem.  The  theories  of  Wundt's  type  have 
the  advantage  of  emphasizing  and  defining 

that  problem. 

Our  ordinary  social  pluralism  leads  us  to 
conceive  the  individual  streams  of  conscious- 
ness as  if  they  were  unable  to  share  even  a 
single  pang  of  pain.     No  one  of  them,  we  have 
said,  can  directly  read  the  secret  of  a  single 
idea   that   floats   in   another   stream.     Each 
conscious  river  of  individual  life  is  close  shut 
between  its    own  banks,  like  the    Oregon  of 
Bryant's  youthful  poem  that  rolls,  ''and  hears 
no  sound  but  his  own  waves." 

But  in  our  actual  social  life,  —  in  the  mar- 
ket-place,    or   at   the   political  gathering,  or 
when  mobs  rage  and  imagine  a  vain  thing,  in 
the  streets  of  a  modern  city,  the  close  shut-in 
streams   of  consciousness  now  appear   as  if 
they  had  lost  their  banks  altogether.     They 
seem  to  flow  together  like  rivers  that  are  lost 
in  the  ocean,  and  to  surge  into  tumultuous 
unity,  as  if  they  were  universal  tides. 

28 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 

Or,  again,  our  ordinary  social  pluralism 
makes  us  view  the  individual  selves  as  if  they 
were  Leibnizian  monads  that  had  no  windows. 
The  social  phenomena  of  the  lives  of  communi- 
ties, on  the  contrary,  make  these  monads  ap- 
pear as  if  they  had  no  walls,  or  as  if  they 
became  mere  drops  that  coalesce.  Our  ethi- 
cal pluralism  makes  us  proudly  declare,  each 
for  himself,  "My  deed  is  my  own."  But 
our  collective  life  often  seems  to  advise  us  to 
say,  not,  "I  act  thus;"  but,  ''Thus  the  com- 
munity acts  in  and  through  me."  Or  again, 
our  cultivated  independence  declares,  "I  think 
thus  and  thus."  But,  when  the  ethnol- 
ogist Bastian  uses  the  formula,  '*Ich  denke 
nicht;  sondern  es  denkt  in  mir,"  the  social 
facts,  especially  of  primitive  human  thought, 
go  far  to  give  this  formula  a  meaning.  In 
Europe  the  discovery  of  individual  thinking 
began  in  some  sense  with  the  early  Greek 
philosophers.  Before  them,  tribes  and  com- 
munities did  the  thinking. 

Now  such  considerations  are  emphasized  by 
the  theories  of  the  type  which  Wundt  favors. 

29 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

Such  theories,   without  being  able  to  tell 
us  all  that  we  should  like  to  know  regarding 
jwhat  constitutes  the  unity  of  a  community, 
have  in  common  the  tendency  to  insist  that 
in    many    cases    a    community    behaves    as 
an    unit,    and    therefore    must    be    an    unit, 
however    its    inner    coherence    may   be    con- 
stituted.    If,   however,   we   admit    the   facts 
which   Wundt   emphasizes,   it   is   natural   to 
seek  for  some  further  and  perhaps  more  con- 
crete way  of  conceiving  what  the  mental  life 
of  a  community  may  be,  and  how  its  unity  is 
constituted.     Wundt  himself  has  hardly  done 
all,  I  think,  that  we  could  desire  in  this  direc- 
tion, and  it  is  natural  to  supplement  his  views 

by  others.  / 

Such  a  further  appriach  towards  an  insight 
into  the  problem  of  the  community  is  sug- 
gested by  William  James's  discussion  of  what, 
in  his  lectures  here  at  Oxford  on  **The  Plural- 
istic Universe,"  he  called  the  "compounding 
of  consciousness." 

The  main  interests  which  guided  James  in 
the  lectures  to  which  I  refer  were  indeed  not 

30 


COMMUNITY   AND   TIME-PROCESS 


the  interests  which  I  have  emphasized  in  the 
early  part  of  this  course.  James  was  not 
dealing  with  the  problems  which  Christianity 
presents ;  nor  was  he  interested  in  the  idea  of 
the  community,  in  the  form  in  which  I  am 
approaching  that  problem.  But  he  was  con- 
cerned with  general  religious  and  metaphysi- 
cal issues ;  and  questions  relating  to  plural- 
ism were  explicitly  in  the  foreground  of  his 
inquiry.  He  was  also  led  to  take  account  of 
manifold  motives  which  tend  to  show  that  our 
mental  world  does  not  merely  consist  of  sun- 
dered fields  or  streams  of  consciousness  with 
barriers  that  part  them. 

Those  who  hear  me  will  well  remember  how 
James  emphasized,  in  the  course  of  his  argu- 
ment, the  difficulties  which,  as  he  explained, 
had  so  long  held  him  back  from  any  form  of 
philosophy  which  should  involve  believing 
that  a  "compounding  of  consciousness"  oc- 
curs, or  is  real.  How  should  any  one  con- 
scious mind  be  inclusive  of  another,  or  such 
that  it  was  compounded  with  that  other  ? 
This  question,  as  James  declared,  had  long 

31 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

seemed  to  him  incapable  of  any  answer  in 
terms    which    should    involve   admitting   the 
possibility  of  such  "co-consciousness,"  if  in- 
deed our  philosophy  were  to  be  permitted  to 
remain  rational  at  all.     But  James  actually 
reached  at  length  a  point  in  his  own  reflections 
where,  as  he  said,  this  compounding  of  con- 
sciousness, this  Bergsonian  interpenetration  of 
the  various  selves,  came  to  appear  to  him  in 
certain  cases  an  empirically  verifiable  fact,  — 
or,  at  all  events,  an  irresistible  hypothesis. 
When  this  point  was  reached,  James  felt  that, 
for  him,  a  philosophical  crisis  had  come. 

James  faced  and  passed  this  crisis.     He  did 
so  upon  the  basis  of  his  own  well-known  anti- 
intellectualism.     The  mental  world,  he  said, 
must  not  be  interpreted  in  rational  terms. 
If  the  compounding  of  consciousness  occurs, 
it   is   irrational,    although    real.     James   was 
rejoiced,  however,  to  feel  that,  in  this  matter, 
he  stood  in  alliance  with  Bergson.     And  so, 
henceforth,  for  James,  the  many  selves  inter- 
penetrated, or,  at  all  events,  might  do  so.     It 
was  merely  the  sterile  intellect   (so  he  now 

32 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 

affirmed)  which  was  responsible  for  the  con- 
ceptual abstractions  that  had  seemed  to  sunder 
various  minds,  not  only  empirically,  but  ab- 
solutely,  and  to  make  the  compounding  of 
consciousness    impossible.     It    still    remained 
for  James  true  that  we  are  indeed  many.     But 
this    assertion    no    longer   implied:     We   are 
sundered  from  one  another  by  divisions  that 
are  absolutely  impassable.     We  may  be  many 
selves;    and  yet,  from  these  many  selves,  a 
larger  self  may  be  compounded,  —  a  self  such 
as  one  of  Fechner's  planetary  consciousnesses 
was,  or  such  as  some  still  vaster  cosmical  form 
of  mental  life  may  be.     This  larger  self  may 
from   above,  as  it  were,  bridge  what  is  for 
us  an   impassable   chasm.     Interpenetration, 
which  for  us  seems  impossible,  may  come  to 
pass  for  some  higher  sort  of  intuition. 

With  this  treatment  of  the  problem  of  the 
one  and  the  many  in  the  form  in  which  social 
psychology  presents  it  to  our  attention,  James's 
account  of  the  great  cosmological  questions 
and  of  their  religious  bearings  came  to  an  end, 
—  just  at  the  point  where  we  all  most  needed 


VOL.  II  —  D 


33 


it 


aajjaajMitfaMaaiMiMaM 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

to  know   what  his  next  step  in  philosophy 

would  be. 

In  substance,  this  outcome  of  a  long  series 
of  efforts  to  deal  with  the  problems  of  the  one 
and  the  many  in  the  world  of  the  mental  beings 
was  based,  in  the  case  of  James,  partly  upon 
empirical  phenomena,  of  the  type  reported  in 
his  "  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  and 
partly  upon  hypothetical  extensions  of  these 
empirical     phenomena.     These    hypothetical 
extensions   themselves  were  again  suggested 
to  him,  partly  by  Fechner's  speculations  on 
the  cosmical   enlargements  of  consciousness ; 
partly  by  the  general  voluntaristic  tendencies 
which  so  long  characterized  James's  religious 
thought ;   and  partly  by  Bergson's  use  of  the 
new  category  of  ''interpenetration"  as  the  one 
especially  suited  to  aid  us  in  the  perception  of 
the  mental  world.     The  results  brought  James, 
at  the  very  close  of  his  career,  into  new  relations 
with  the  idealistic  tradition  in  philosophy,  — 
a  relation  which  I  ought  not  here  to  attempt 
to  characterize  at  all  extensively.  ^ 

But  in  any  case,  the  sort  of  compounding  of  j 

34 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME- PROCESS 

consciousness  which  James  favored  differed  in 
many  respects  from  what  I  have  in  mind  when  j 
I  speak  of  the  idea  of  the  community.     When 
the  minds  of  James's  world  began  to  inter- 
penetrate in  earnest,  as  they  did  in  this  last 
phase  of  his  religious  speculation,  they  behaved 
much  like  drops  of  mercury  that,  falling,  may 
form  a  pool,  until,  moved  by  one  impulse  or 
another,  they  break  away  from   their   union 
again,   and   flow   and   glitter   until  the  next 
blending    occur.     Paul's    conception    of    the 
spirit  in  the  Church  never  appealed,  I  think, 
to  James's  mind. 

But,  in  any  case,  James's  final  opinions, 
although  only  indirectly  bearing  upon  our  own 
main  problem,  tended  to  show,  better  than 
would  otherwise  have  been  possible,  where 
the  true  problem  lies. 


IX 

We  may  be  aided  in  making  a  more  decisive 
advance  towards  understanding  what  a  com- 
munity is  by  emphasizing  at  this  point  a 
motive  which  we  have  not  before  mentioned, 

35 


THE   PROBLEM  OF   CHRISTIANITY 


and  which  no  doubt  plays  a  great  part  in  the 
psycholog;^'  of  the  social  consciousness. 
/^  Any  notable  case  wherein  we  find  a  social 
organization  which  we  can  call,  in  the  psycho- 
logical sense,  either  a  highly  developed  com- 
munity or  the  creation  or  product  of  such  a 
community,  is  a  case  where  some  process 
of  the  nature  of  a  history  —  that  is,  of  co- 
herent social  evolution  —  has  gone  on,  and 
has  gone  on  for  a  long  time,  and  is  more  or  less 
remembered  by  the  community  in  question. 
If,  ignoring  history,  you  merely  take  a  cross- 
section  of  the  social  order  at  any  one  moment ; 
and  if  you  thus  deal  with  social  groups  that 
have  little  or  no  history,  and  confine  your 
attention  to  social  processes  which  occur  dur- 
ing a  short  period  of  time,  —  for  example, 
during  an  hour,  or  a  day,  or  a  year,  —  what 
then  is  likely  to  come  to  your  notice  takes 
either  the  predominantly  pluralistic  form  of 
the  various  relatively  independent  doings  of 
detached  individuals,  or  else  the  social  form 
of  the  confused  activities  of  a  crowd.  A 
crowd,   whether  it  be  a  dangerous   mob,   or 

36 


/ 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
,    an  amiably  joyous   gathering  at  a  picnic,  is 
not  a  community.     It  has  a  mind,   but  'no 
institutions,    no    organization,    no    coherent 
unity,  no  history,  no  traditions.     It  may  be 
an  unit,  but  is  then  of  the  type  which  suggests 
James's  mere  blending  of  various  conscious- 
nesses, -  a  sort  of  mystical  loss  of  personality 
on  the  part  of  its  members.     On  the  other 
hand,  a  group  of  independent  buyers  at  mar- 
ket, or  of  the  passers-by  in  a  city  street,  is 
not  a  community.     And  it  also  does  not  sug- 
gest  to  the  onlooker  any  blending  of  many 
selves  in  one.     Each  purchaser  seeks  his  own 
affairs.     There  may  be  gossip,  but  gossip  is 
not  a  function  which  establishes  the  life  of  a 
community.     For  gossip  has  a  short  memory. 
But  a  true  community  is  essentially  a  product"!  • 
of  a  time-process.     A  community  has  a  past   ( 
and  will  have  a  future.     Its  more  or  less  con-    ' 
scious  history,  real  or  ideal,  is  a  part  of  its 
very  essence.     A  community  requires  for  its   f 
existence  a  history  and  is  greatly  aided  in 
Its  consciousness  by  a  memory. 
If  you  object  that  a  Pauline  church,  such  as 

37 


i 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

I  have  so  often  used  as  an  ideal  instance  of  a 
community,  was  an  institution  that  had  been 
but  very  recently  founded  when  the  apostle 
wrote  his  epistles,  then  I  reply  at  once  that  a 
PauHne  church  was  instructed  by  the  apostle 
to  regard  its  life  as  a  phase  in  the  historical 
process  of  the  salvation   of  mankind.     This 
process,  as  conceived  by  Paul  and  his  churches, 
had  gone  on  from  Adam  unto  Moses,  from 
Moses  unto  Christ ;    and  the  very  life  of  the 
community  was  bound  up  with  its  philosophy 
of  history.     That  the  memory  of  this  com- 
munity was  in  part  legendary  is  beside  the 
point.     Its  memory  was  essential  to  its  life, 
and  was  busy  with  the  fate  of  all  mankind 
and  with  the  course  of  all  time. 
j\    The  psychological  unity  of  many  selves  in 
one  community  is  bound  up,  then,  with  the 
consciousness  of  some  lengthy  social  process 
which  has  occurred,  or  is  at  least  supposed 
to    have   occurred.     x\nd   the   wealthier   the 
memory  of  a  community  is,  and  the  vaster  the 
historical  processes  which  it  regards  as  belong- 
ing to  its  life,  the  richer  —  other  things  being 

38 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
equal  —  is  its  consciousness  that  it  is  a  com- 
munity, that  its  members  are  somehow  made 
one  in  and  through  and   with  its  own  life,  i 

The  Japanese  are  fond  of  telling  us  that 
their  imperial  family,  and  their  national  life, 
are  coeval  with  heaven  and  earth.     The  boast 
is  cheerfully  extravagant ;  but  its  relation  to  a 
highly  developed  form  of  the  consciousness 
of  a  community  is  obvious.     Here,  then,  is  a 
consideration  belonging  to  social  psychology, 
but  highly  important  for  our  understanding  of 
the  sense  in  which  a  community  is  or  can  be 
possessed  of  one  mental  life. 


If  we  ask  for  the  reason  why  such  a  real  or 
fancied  history,  possessing  in  general  a  con- 
siderable  length  and  importance,  is  psycholog- 
ically needed  in  case  a  group  consisting  of 
many  individual  human   beings  is  to  regard 
itself  as  an  united  community,  our  attention 
IS  at  once  called  to  a  consideration  wliich  I 
regard  as  indeed  decisive  for  the  whole  theory 
of  the  reality  of   the   community.     Obvious 


39 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

as  it  is,  however,  this  consideration  needs  to  be 
expHcitly  mentioned,  because  the  complexity 
of  the  facts   often   makes   us   neglect  them. 
The  rule  that  time  is  needed  for  the  forma- 
tion of  a  conscious  community  is  a  rule  which 
finds  its  extremely  familiar  analogy  within  the 
life   of   every   individual   human   self.     Each 
one  of  us  knows  that  he  just  now,  at  this  in- 
stant, cannot  find  more  than  a  mere  fragment 
of  himself  present.     The  self  comes  down  to  , 
us  from  its  own  past.     It  needs  and  is  a  his-  K 
tory.     Each  of  us  can  see  that  his  own  idea   | 
of  himself  as  this  person  is  inseparably  bound 
up  with  his  view  of  his  own  former  life,  of  the 
plans  that  he  formed,  of  the  fortunes   that 
fashioned  him,  and  of  the  accomplishments 
which  in  turn  he  has  fashioned  for  himself. 
A  self  is,  by  its  very  essence,  a  being  wdth  a 
past.     One  must  look  lengthwise  backw^ards  in 
the  stream  of  time  in  order  to  see  the  self,  or 
its  shadow,  now  mo\ang  with  the  stream,  now 
eddying  in  the  currents  from  bank  to  bank  of 
its  channel,  and  now  strenuously  straining  on- 
wards in  the  pursuit  of  its  own  chosen  good. 

40 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
At  this  present  moment  I  am  indeed  here, 
as  this  creature  of  the  moment,  -  sundered 
from  the  other  selves.     But  nevertheless,  if 
considered  simply  in  this  passing  moment  of 
my  life,  I  am  hardly  a  self  at  all.     I  am  just 
a  flash  of  consciousness,  — the  mere  gesticula- 
tion of  a  self,  -  not  a  coherent  personality. 
Yet  memory  links  me  with  my  own  past,  - 
and  not,  in  the  same  way,  with  the  past  of 
any  one  else.    This  joining  of  the  present  to  the 
past  reveals  a  more  or  less  steady  tendency,  — 
a  sense  about  the  whole  process  of  my  remem- 
bered life.     And  this  tendency  and  sense  of 
my  mdividual  life  agree,  on  the  whole,  with 
the  sense  and  the  tendencies  that  belong  to 
the  entire  flow  of  the  time-stream,  so  far  as  it 
has   sense   at   all.     My   individual   hfe,    my 
own  more  or  less   well-sundered    stream    of 
tendency,  not  only  is  shut  off  at  each  present 
moment  by  various  barriers  from  the  lives  of 
other  selves, -but   also   constitutes   an   in- 
telligible sequence  in  itself,  so  that,  as  I  look 
back,  I  can  say :  "What  I  yesterday  intended 
to  pursue,  that  I  am  to-day  still  pursuing.' 

41 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

"My  present  carries  farther  the  plan  of  my 
past."  Thus,  then,  I  am  one  more  or  less 
coherent  plan  expressed  in  a  life.  "The 
child  is  father  to  the  man."  My  days  are 
"bound  each  to  each  by  mutual  piety." 

Since  I  am  this  self,  not  only  by  reason  of 
what  now  sunders  me  from  the  inner  lives  of 
other  selves,  but  by  reason  of  what  links  me, 
in  significant  fashion,  to  the  remembered  ex- 
periences, deeds,  plans,  and  interests  of  my 
former  conscious  life,  I  need  a  somewhat  ex- 
tended and  remembered  past  to  furnish  the 
opportunity  for  my  self  to  find,  when  it  looks 
back,  a  long  process  that  possesses  sense  and 
coherence.  In  brief,  my  idea  of  myself  is  an.  • 
interpretation  of  my  past,  —  Unked  also  with 
an  interpretation  of  my  hopes  and  intentions 

as  to  my  future. 

Precisely  as  I  thus  define  myself  with  ref- 
erence to  my  own  past,  so  my  fellows  also 
interpret  the  sense,  the  value,  the  qualifica- 
tions, and  the  possessions  of  my  present  self 
by  virtue  of  what  are  sometimes  called  my 
antecedents.     In  the  eyes  of  his  fellow-men, 

42 


\ 


k 


\ 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
the  child  is  less  of  a  self  than  is  the  mature 
man ;    and  he  is  so  not  merely  because  the 
child  just  now  possesses  a  less  wealthy  and 
efficient  conscious   life  than   a   mature  man 
possesses,  but  because  the  antecedents  of  his 
present  self  are  fewer  than  are  the  antecedents 
of  the  present  self  of  the  mature  man.     The 
child  has  little  past.     He  has  accomplished 
little.     The    mature    man    bears    the    credit 
and  the  burden  of  his  long  life  of  deeds.     His 
former  works  qualify  his  present  deeds.     He 
not  only  possesses,  but  in  great  part  is,  for 
his  fellow-men,  a  record. 

These  facts  about  our  individual  self-con-^ 
sciousness  are  indeed  well  known.     But  they    ' 
remind  us  that  our  idea  of  the  individual  self 
IS   no   mere  present  datum,  or  collection   of 
\     data,  but  is  based  upon  an  interpretation  of 
^^  the  sense,  of  the  tendency,  of  the  coherence. 
'    and  of  the  value  of  a  life  to  which  belongs  the 
memory  of  its  own  past.     And  therefore  these  ^^ 
same  facts  will  help  us  to  see  how  the  idea  of 
the  community  is  also  an  idea  which  is  im- 
pressed upon  us  whenever  we  make  a  suffi- 

48 


» 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

ciently  successful  and  fruitful  effort  to  interpret 
the  sense,  the  coherent  interest,  and  the  value 
of  the  relations  in  which  a  great  number  of 
different  selves  stand  to  the  past. 

XI 

Can  many  different  selves,  all  belonging 
to  the  present  time,  possess  identically  the 
same  past  as  their  own  personally  interesting 
past  life  ?     This  question,  if  asked  about  the 
recent  past,  cannot  be  answered  in  the  affirma- 
tive, unless  one  proposes  either  to  ignore  or 
in  some  way  to  set  aside  the  motives  which, 
in  our  present  consciousness,  emphasize,  as 
we  have  seen,  the   pluralism    of   the   social 
selves.     Quite    different,    however,    becomes 
the  possible  answer  to  this  question  if,  with- 
out in  the  least  ignoring  our  present  varieties 
and  sunderings,  one  asks  the  question  con- 
cerning some  past  time  that  belongs  to  pre- 
vious  generations   of   men.     For   then   each 
of  two  or  more  men  may  regard  the  same  fact 
of  past  life  as,  in  the  same  sense,  a  part  of  his 
own  personal  life.    Two  men  of  the  present 

44 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
time  may,  for  instance,  have  any  number  of 
ancestors  in  common.     To  say  this  is  not  to 
Ignore  the  pluralistic  view  of  the  selves,  but 
■     only  to  make  mention  of  familiar  facts  of  de- 
scent.    But    now    if   these    men    take   great 
interest  m  their  ancestors,  and  have  a  genuine 
or   legendary    tradition    concerning    the   an 
cestors,  each  of  the  two  men  of  the  present 
time  may  regard    the  lives,   the  deeds,   the 
glory,  and  perhaps  the  spiritual  powers  or 
the  immortal  lives  of  certain  ancestors,  now 
dwelhng  in  the  spirit-world,  as  a  part  of  his 
own  self.    Thus,  when  the  individual  Maori 
in  New  Zealand,  in  case  he  still  follows  the 
old  ways,  speaks  of  the  legendaiy  canoes  in 
which  the  ancestors  of  old  came  over  from  the 
home  land  called  Hawaiki  to  New  Zealand,  he 
says,  choosing  the  name  of  the  canoe  accord- 
ing to  his  own  tribe  and  tradition,  "/  came 
over  in  the  canoe  Tai-Nui."     Now  any  two 
members  of  a  tribe  whose  legendaiy  ancestors 
came  over  in   Tai-Nui,   possess,  from   their 
own  point  of  view,  identically  the  same  past, 
'n  just  this  respect.    Each  of  the  two  men  in 

45 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

question  has  the  same  reason,  good  or  bad,  for 
extending  himself  into  the  past,  and  for  saying, 
''I  came  over  in  that  canoe."     Now  the  behef 
in  this  identity  of  the  past  self  of  the  ancestor 
of  the  canoe,  belonging  to  each  of  the  two 
New  Zealanders,  does  not  in  the  least  depend 
upon  ignoring,  or  upon  minimizing,  the  present 
difference    between    these    two    selves.     The 
present  consciousnesses  do  not  in  the  least 
tend  to  interpenetrate.      Neither  of  the  two 
New   Zealanders    in    question    need    suppose 
that  there  is  now  any  compounding  of  con- 
sciousness.    Each  may  keep  aloof  from  the 
other.     They    may    be    enemies.     But    each 
has  a  reason,  and  an  obvious  reason,  for  ex- 
tending himself  into  the  ancestral  past. 

My  individual  self  extends  backwards,  and 
is  identified  with  my  remembered  self  of 
yesterday,  or  of  former  years.  This  is  an 
interpretation  of  my  life  which  in  general 
turns  upon  the  coherence  of  deeds,  plans,  in- 
terests, hopes,  and  spiritual  possessions  in 
terms  of  which  I  learn  to  define  myself.  Now 
my  remembered  past  is  in  general  easily  to  be 

46 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
distinguished  from  the  past  of  any  other  self. 
But  if  I  am  so  interested  in  the  life  or  in  the 
deeds  of  former  generations  that  I  thus  ex- 
tend, as  the  xMaori  extends,  my  own  self  into 
the  ancestral  past,  the  self  thus  extended  finds 
that  the  same  identical  canoe  or  ancestor  is 
part  of   my  own  life,  and   also  part  of   the 
ideally  extended  life  of  some  fellow-tribesman 
who  is  now  so  different  a  being,  and  so  sharply 
sundered  from  my  present  self. 

Now,  in  such  a  case,  how  shall  I  best  de- 
scribe the  unity  that,  according  to  this  inter- 
pretation of  our  common  past,  links  my  fellow- 
tribesmen  and  myself?  A  New  Zealander 
says,  "We  are  of  the  same  canoe."  And  a 
more  general  expression  of  such  relations  would 
be  to  say,  in  all  similar  cases,  "We  are  of  the 
same  community." 

In  this  case,  then,  the  real  or  supposed'^ 
identity  of  certain  interesting  features  in  a 
past  which  each  one  of  two  or  of  many  men 
regards  as  belonging  to  his  own  historically 
extended  former  self,  is  a  ground  for  saying 
that  all  these  many,  although  now  just  as 

47 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

various  and  as  sundered  as  they  are,  con- 
stitute, with  reference  to  this  common  past,  a 
community.     When   defined   in   such   terms, 
the  concept  of  the  community  loses  its  mys- 
tical seeming.     It  depends  indeed  upon  an 
interpretation  of  the  significance  of  facts,  and 
does  not  confine  itself  to  mere  report  of  par- 
ticulars ;    but  it  does  not  ignore  the  present 
varieties  of  experience.    It  depends  also  upon 
an  interpretation  which  does  not  merely  say, 
"These  events  happened,"  but  adds,  "These 
events  belong  to  the  life  of  this  self  or  of  this 
other  self."     Such  an  interpretation  we  all 
daily  make  in  speaking  of  the  past  of  our  own 
familiar  individual  selves.    The  process  which 
I  am  now  using  as  an  illustration,  —  the  pro- 
cess whereby  the    New    Zealander  says,  "I 
came    over    in    that    canoe,"  —  extends    the 
quasi-personal  memory  of  each  man  into  an 
historical  past  that  may  be  indefinitely  long 
and  vast.     But  such  an  extension  has  motives 
which  are  not  necessarily  either  mystical  or 
monistic.     We  all  share  those  motives,  and 
use  them,  in  our  own  way,  and  according  to 

48 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 
our  ideals,  whenever  we  consider  the  history 
of  our  country,  or  of  mankind,  or  of  whatever 
else  seems  to  us  to  possess  a  history  that  is 
significantly  linked  with  our  personal  history. 

XII 

Just  as  each  one  of  many  present  selves, 

despite  the  psychological  or  ethical  barriers 

which  now  keep  all  of  these  selves  sundered, 

may  accept  the  same  past  fact  or  event  as  a 

part  of  himself,  and  say,  "That  belonged  to  my 

life,"   even   so,   each    one   of  many  present"! 

selves,  despite  these  same  barriers  and  sun- 

derings,  may  accept  the  same  future  event, 

which  all  of  them  hope  or  expect,  as  part  of 

his  own  personal  future.     Thus,  during  a  war, 

all  of  the  patriots  of  one  of  the  contending 

nations  may  regard  the  termination  of  the 

war,  and  the  desired  victory  of  their  country, 

so  that   each   one  says:    "I  shall   rejoice   in 

the   expected    surrender  of   that    stronghold 

of  the  enemy.     That  surrender  will  be  my 

triumph." 

Now  when   many    contemporary  and  dis- 


VOL.  II 


E 


49 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

tinct  individual  selves  so  interpret,  each  his 
own  personal  life,  that  each  says  of  an  individ- 
ual past  or  of  a  determinate  future  event  or 
deed:    **That   belongs   to   my   life;"    "That 
occurred,  or  will  occur,  to  me,"    then  these 
many  selves  may  be  defined  as  hereby  con- 
stituting, in  a  perfectly  definite  and  objective, 
but  also  in  a  highly  significant,  sense,  a  com- 
munity.    They  may  be  said  to  constitute  a 
community  with  reference  to  that  particular 
past  or  future  event,  or  group  of  events,  which 
each  of  them  accepts  or  interprets  as  belonging 
to  his  own  personal  past  or  to  his  own  individ- 
ual future.     A  community  constituted  by  the 
fact  that  each  of  its  members  accepts  as  part 
of  his  own  individual  life  and  self  the  same 
past  events  that  each  of  his  fellow-members 
accepts,  may  be  called  a  community  of  memory. 
Such  is  any  group  of  persons  who  individually 
either  remember  or  commemorate   the  same 
jead,  —  each  one  finding,  because  of  personal 
affection  or   of  reverence  for   the  dead,  that 
those  whom  he  commemorates  form  for  him 
a  part  of  his  own  past  existence. 

50 


COMMUNITY  AND   TIME-PROCESS 

A  community  constituted  by  the  fact  that 
each  of  its  members  accepts,  as  part  of  his 
own  individual  life  and  self,  the  same  expected 
future  events  that  each  of  his  fellows  accepts, 
may  be  called  a  community  of  expectation,  or 
upon  occasion,  a  community  of  hope.  / 

A  community,   whether  of  memory  or  of/ 
hope,  exists  relatively  to  the  past  or  future 
facts  to  which  its  several  members  stand  in 
the  common  relation  just  defined.     The  con- 
cept of  the  community  depends  upon  the  in- 
terpretation  which  each  individual  member 
gives  to  his  own  self,  —  to  his  own  past,  — 
and  to  his  own  future.     Every  one  of  us  does, 
for  various  reasons,  extend  his  interpretation 
of  his  own  individual  self  so  that  from  his 
own  point  of  view,  his  life  includes  many  far- 
away    temporal    happenings.     The    complex 
motives  of  such  interpretations  need  not  now 
be  further  examined.      Enough,  —  these  mo- 
tives may  vary  from  self  to  self  with  all  the 
wealth  of  life.     Yet  when  these  interests  of 
each  self  lead  it  to  accept  any  part  or  item  of 
the  same  past  or  the  same  future  which  an- 

51 


f 

k 

m 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

other  self  accepts  as  its  own,  —  then  pluralism 
of  the  selves  is  perfectly  consistent  with  their 
forming  a  community,  either  of  memory  or 
of  hope.  How  rich  this  community  is  in 
meaning,  in  value,  in  membership,  in  signifi- 
cant organization,  will  depend  upon  the  selves 
that  enter  into  the  community,  and  upon  the 
ideals  in  terms  of  which  they  define  themselves, 
their  past,  and  their  future. 

With  this  definition  in  mind,  we  see  why 
long  histories  are  needed  in  order  to  define 
the  life  of  great  communities.  We  also  see 
that,  if  great  new  undertakings  enter  into  the 
lives  of  many  men,  a  new  community  of  hope, 
unified  by  the  common  relations  of  its  individ- 
ual members  to  the  same  future  events,  may 
be,  upon  occasion,  very  rapidly  constituted, 
even  in  the  midst  of  great  revolutions. 

The  concept  of  the   community,   as  thus 
■  analyzed,  stands  in  the  closest  relation  to  the 
whole  nature  of  the  time-process,   and  also 
,  involves  recognizing  to  the  full  both  the  exist- 
ence and  the  significance  of  individual  selves. 
In  what  sense  the  individual  selves  constitute 

52 


B 


COMMUNITY  AND  TIME-PROCESS 

the  community  we  can  in  general  see,  while 
we  are  prepared  to  find  that,  for  the  individual 
selves,  it  may  well  prove  to  be  the  case  that  a 
real  community  of  memory  or  of  hope  is  neces- 
sary   in    order    to   secure    their    significance. 
Our  own  definition  of  a  community  can  be 
illustrated  by  countless  types  of  political,  re- 
Hgious,    and    other    significant    communities 
which  you  will  readily  be  able  to  select  for 
yourselves.     Without   ignoring   our   ordinary 
social  pluralism,  this  definition  shows  how  and 
why  many  selves  may  be  viewed  as  actually 
brought  together  in  an  historical  community. 
Without  presupposing  any  one  metaphysical 
interpretation  of  experience,  or  of  time,  our 
definition  shows  where,  in  our  experience  and 
in  our  interpretation  of  the  time-process,  we 
are  to  look  for  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  the 
community.     Without  going  beyond  the  facts 
of  human  life,  of  human  memory,  and  of  hu- 
man interpretation  of  the  self  and  of  its  past, 
our  definition  clears  the  way  for  a  study  of  the 
constitution  of  the  real  world  of  the  spirit.        | 


53 


X 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


'J  ' 

% 

•it 


LECTURE  X 

THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

TTENCEFORTH,    in    these    lectures,    I 
-■-*•    shall  restrict  the  appUcation  of  the  term 
"community"  to  those  social  groups  which 
conform  to  the  definition  stated  at  the  close 
of  our  last  lecture.     Not  every  social  group 
which   behaves  so  that,   to  an   observer,   it 
seems  to  be  a  single  unit,  meets  all  the  condi- 
tions of  our  definition.     Our  new  use  of  the 
term  "community"  will   therefore  be  more 
precise  and  restricted  than  was  our  earher 
employment  of  the  word.     But  our  definition 
will  clear  the  way  for  further  generalizations. 
It  will  enable  us  to  express  our  reasons  for 
much  that,  in  our  study  of  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  life,  had  to  be  stated  dogmatically, 
and   illustrated    rather   than    intimately   ex- 
amined. 

We  have  repeatedly  spoken  of  two  levels  of 
human  hfe,  the  level  of  the  individual  and  the 
level  of  the  community.     We  have  now  in  our 

67 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

hands  the  means  for  giving  a  more  precbe 
sense  to  this  expression,  and  for  furmsh  ng 
a  further  verification   of  what   we   asserted 
about  these  two  levels  of  Ufe.     We  ha.-e  also 
repeatedly  emphasized  the  ethical  and  rel  - 
gious  significance  of  loyalty ;   but  our  defin^ 
ion  will  help  us  to  throw  clearer  hght  upon 
the    sources    of    this    worth.     And    by    thus 
sharpening  the  outlines  of  our  picture  of  what  a 
real  community  is,  we  shall  be  -ade  readyjo 
consider  whether  the   concept   of   the     om 
„.unity  possesses  a  more  than  ^u-n  s.gmfi- 
cance.     Let  us  recall  our  new  defimUon  to 
mind,  and  then  apply  it  to  our  mam  problems. 

I 

Our  definition  presupposes  that  there  exist 
,,any  individual  selves.  Suppose  these  seb.es 
to  vary  in  their  present  experiences  and  pur 

wirlelv  as  vou  will.     Imagme  them 
poses  as  widely  as  you 

L  be  sundered  from  on.  another  by  such 
chasms  of  mutual  mystery  and  independence 
%  on,  natural  s«.i.l  Me,  often  seem  hope- 
Ly  to  divide  and  secrete  the  inner  world 

58 


^ 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

of  each  of  us  from  the  direct  knowledge  and 
estimate  of  his  fellows.  But  let  these  selves 
be  able  to  look  beyond  their  present  chaos  of 
fleeting  ideas  and  of  warring  desires,  far  away 
into  the  past  whence  they  came,  and  into  the 
future  whither  their  hopes  lead  them.  As 
they  thus  look,  let  each  one  of  them  ideally 
enlarge  his  own  individual  life,  extending 
himself  into  the  past  and  future,  so  as  to  say 
of  some  far-off  event,  belonging,  perhaps,  to 
other  generations  of  men,  *'I  view  that  event 
as  a  part  of  my  own  life."  "That  former 
happening  or  achievement  so  predetermined 
the  sense  and  the  destiny  which  are  now  mine, 
that  I  am  moved  to  regard  it  as  belonging 
to  my  own  past."  Or  again:  "For  that 
coming  event  I  wait  and  hope  as  an  event  of 
my  own  future." 

And  further,  let  the  various  ideal  extensions, 
forwards  and  backwards,  include  at  least  one 
common  event,  so  that  each  of  these  selves 
regards  that  event  as  a  part  of  his  own  life. 

Then,  with  reference  to  the  ideal  common  past 
and  future  in  question,  I  say  that  these  selves 

59 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

constitute  a  community.  This  is  henceforth 
to  be  our  definition  of  a  community.  The 
present  variety  of  the  selves  who  are  the  mem- 
bers of  the  spiritual  body  so  defined,  is  not 
hereby  either  annulled  or  sHghted.  The  mo- 
tives which  determine  each  of  them  thus 
ideally  to  extend  his  own  Ufe,  may  vary  from 
self  to  self  in  the  most  manifold  fashion. 

Our  definition  will  enable  us,  despite  all 
these  varieties  of  the  members,  to  understand 
in  what  sense  any  such  community  as  we  have 
defined  exists,  and  is  one. 

Into  this  form,  which,  when  thus  summarily 
described,  seems  so  abstract  and  empty,  Hfe 
can  and  does  pour  the  rich  contents  and 
ideals  which  make  the  communities  of  our 
human  world  so  full  of  dramatic  variety  and 
significance. 

n 

/  The  first  condition  upon  which  the  existence 
of  a  community,  in  our  sense  of  the  word,  de- 
pends,  is  the  power  of  an  individual  self  to 
extend  his  life,  in  ideal  fashion,  so  as  to  regard 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

it  as  including  past  and  future  events  which 
lie  far  away  in  time,  and  which  he  does  not  now 
personally  remember.  That  this  power  exists, 
and  that  man  has  a  self  which  is  thus  ideally 
extensible  in  time  without  any  definable  Umit, 
we  all  know. 

This  power  itself  rests  upon  the  principle 
that,  however  a  man  may  come  by  his  idea 
of  himself,  the  self  is  no  mere  datum,  but  is  in 
its  essence  a  life  which  is  interpreted,  and 
which  interprets  itself,  and  which,  apart  from 
some  sort  of  ideal  interpretation,  is  a  mere 
flight  of  ideas,  or  a  meaningless  flow  of  feehngs, 
or  a  vision  that  sees  nothing,  or  else  a  barren 
abstract  conception.  How  deep  the  process 
of  interpretation  goes  in  determining  the  real 
nature  of  the  self,  we  shall  only  later  be  able  to 
estimate. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  what  we  usually 
call  our  personal  memory  does  indeed  give  us 
assurances  regarding  our  own  past,  so  far  as 
memory  extends  and  is  trustworthy.  But 
our  trust  in  our  memories  is  itself  an  interpre- 
tation of  their  data.     All  of  us  regard  as  be- 

•1 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

longing,  even  to  our  recent  past  life,  much 
that  we  cannot  just  now  remember.  And 
the  future  self  shrinks  and  expands  with  our 
hopes  and  our  energies.  No  one  can  merely, 
from  without,  set  for  us  the  limits  of  the  life 
of  the  self,  and  say  to  us :   "Thus  far  and  no 

farther." 

In  my  ideal  extensions  of  the  hfe  of  the  self, 
I  am  indeed  subject  to  some  sort  of  control,  — 
to  what  control  we  need  not  here  attempt  to 
formulate.  I  must  be  able  to  give  myself 
some  sort  of  reason,  personal,  or  social,  or 
moral,  or  rehgious,  or  metaphysical,  for  taking 
on  or  throwing  off  the  burden,  the  joy,  the 
grief,  the  guilt,  the  hope,  the  glory  of  past  and 
of  future  deeds  and  experiences ;  but  I  must 
also  myself  personally  share  in  this  task  of 
determining  how  much  of  the  past  and  the 
future  shall  ideally  enter  into  my  life,  and  shall 
contribute  to  the  value  of  that  life. 

And  if  I  choose  to  say,  "There  is  a  sense 
in  which  all  the  tragedy  and  the  attainment 
of  an  endless  past  and  future  of  deeds  and  of 
fortunes  enter  into  my  own  life,"  I  say  only 

62 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

what  saints  and  sages  of  the  most  various 
creeds  and  experiences  have  found  their  several 
reasons  for  saying.  The  fact  and  the  impor- 
tance of  such  ideal  extensions  of  the  self  must 
therefore  be  recognized.  Here  is  the  first 
basis  for  every  clear  idea  of  what  constitutes 
a  community. 

The  ideal  extensions  of  the  self  may  also 
include,  as  is  well  known,  not  only  past  and 
future  events  and  deeds,  but  also  physical 
things,  whether  now  existent  or  not,  and  many 
other  sorts  of  objects  which  are  neither  events 
nor  deeds.  The  knight  or  the  samurai  re- 
garded his  sword  as  a  part  of  himself.  One's 
treasures  and  one's  home,  one's  tools,  and  the 
things  that  one's  hands  have  made,  frequently 
come  to  be  interpreted  as  part  of  the  self. 
And  any  object  in  heaven  or  earth  may  be 
thus  ideally  appropriated  by  a  given  self 
The  ideal  self  of  the  Stoic  or  of  the  Mystic 
may,  in  various  fashions,  identify  its  will, 
or  its  very  essence,  with  the  whole  universe. 
The  Hindoo  seer  seeks  to  realize  the  words : 
"I  am  Brahm;"     "That  art  thou." 

63 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

In  case  such  ideal  extensions  of  the  self  are 

consciously   bound   up   with   deeds,   or   with 

other  events,  such  as  belong  to  the  past  or 

future  life  which  the  self  regards  as  its  own j 

,our  definition  of  the  community  warrants  us\ 

/;  in  saying  that  many  selves  form  one  com- 


1 


munity  when  all  are  ideally  extended  so  as  to 
i  include  the  same  object.  But  unless  the  ideal 
extensions  of  the  self  thus  consciously  involve 
past  and  future  deeds  and  events  that  have 
to  do  with  the  objects  in  question,  we  shall 
not  use  these  extensions  to  help  us  to  define 
communities. 

/  For  our  purposes,  the  community  is  a  being 
j  that  attempts  to  accomplish  something  in 
\time  and  through  the  deeds  of  its  members. 
These  deeds  belong  to  the  Hfe  which  each 
member  regards  as,  in  ideal,  his  own.  It  is 
in  this  way  that  both  the  real  and  the  ideal 
Church  are  intended  by  the  members  to  be  com- 
munities in  our  sense.  An  analogous  truth 
holds  for  such  other  communities  as  we  shall 
need  to  consider.  The  concept  of  the  com- 
munity is  thus,  for  our  purposes,  a  practical 

64 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

conception.  It  involves  the  idea  of  deeds 
done,  and  ends  sought  or  attained.  Hence  1 
shall  define  it  in  terms  of  members  who  them- 
selves not  only  live  in  time,  but  conceive  their 
own  ideally  extended  personahties  in  terms  of 
a  time-process.  In  so  far  as  these  personahties 
possess  a  life  that  is  for  each  of  them  his  own, 
while  it  is,  in  some  of  its  events,  common  to 
them  all,  they  form  a  community. 

Nothing  important  is  lost,  for  our  concep- 
tion of  the  community,  by  this  formal  re- 
striction, whereby  common  objects  belong  to 
a  community  only  when  these  objects  are 
bound  up  with  the  deeds  of  the  community. 
For,  when  the  warrior  regards  his  sword  as  a 
part  of  himself,  he  does  so  because  his  sword  is 
the  instrument  of  his  will,  and  because  what 
he  does  with  his  sword  belongs  to  his  hteral  or 
ideal  life.  Even  the  mystic  accomplishes  his 
identification  of  the  self  and  the  world  only 
through  acts  of  renunciation  or  of  inward 
triumph.  And  these  acts  are  the  goal  of  his 
life.  Until  he  attains  to  them,  they  form 
part  of  his  ideal  future  self.     Whenever  he 


VOL.  II  —  P 


65 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

fully  accomplishes  these  crowning  acts  of 
identification,  the  separate  self  no  longer 
exists.  When  knights  or  mystics  form  a 
community,  in  our  sense,  they  therefore  do  so 
because  they  conceive  of  deeds  done,  in  com- 
mon, with  their  swords,  or  of  mystical  attain- 
ments that  all  of  them  win  together. 

Thus  then,  while  no  authoritative  limit  can 
be  placed  upon  the  ideal  extensions  of  the  self 
in  time,  those  extensions  of  the  self  which 
need  be  considered  for  the  purposes  of  our 
theory  of  the  community  are  indeed  extensions 
in  time,  past  or  future ;  or  at  all  events  in- 
volve such  extensions  in  time. 

Memory  and  hope  constantly  incite  us  to 
the  extensions  of  the  self  which  play  so  large  a 
part  in  our  daily  life.  Social  motives  of  end- 
lessly diverse  sort  move  us  to  consider  "far 
and  forgot"  as  if  to  us  it  were  near,  when  we 
view  ourselves  in  the  vaster  perspectives  of 
time.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  ideally  extended  self, 
and  not,  in  general,  the  momentary  self,  whose 
life  is  worth  living,  whose  sense  outlasts  our 
fleeting    days,    and    whose    destiny    may    be 

66 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


worthy  of  the  interest  of  beings  who  are  above 
the  level  of  human  individuals.  The  present 
self,  the  fleeting  individual  of  to-day,  is  a 
mere  gesticulation  of  a  self.  The  genuine  1 
person  lives  in  the  far-off  past  and  future  as 
well  as  in  the  present.  It  is,  then,  the  ideally 
extended  self  that  is  worthy  to  belong  to  a 
significant  community. 


Ill 

The  second  condition  upon  which  the  exist- 
ence of  a  community  depends  is  the  fact  that 
there  are  in  the  social  world  a  number  of  dis- 
tinct selves  capable  of  social  communication, 
and,  in  general,  engaged  in  communication. 

The  distinctness  of  the  selves  we  have  illus- 
trated at  length  in  our  previous  discussion. 
We  need  not  here  dwell  upon  the  matter  fur- 
ther, except  to  say,  expressly,  that  a  com- 
munity does  not  become  one,  in  the  sense  of 
my  definition,  by  virtue  of  any  reduction  or 
melting  of  these  various  selves  into  a  single 
merely  present  self,  or  into  a  mass  of  passing 
experience.     That  mystical  phenomena  may 

67 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

indeed  form  part  of  the  life  of  a  community, 
just  as  they  may  also  form  part  of  the  life 
of  an  individual  human  being,  I  fully  recognize. 
About  such  mystical  or  quasi-mystical  phe- 
nomena, occurring  in  their  own  community, 
the  Corinthians  consulted  Paul.     And  Pa^l, 
whose  implied  theory   of  the  community   is 
one  which  my  own  definition  closely  follows, 
assured  them  in  his  reply  that  mystical  phe- 
nomena are  not  essential  to  the  existence  of 
the  community;   and  that  it  is  on  the  whole 
better  for  the  life  of  such  a  community  as  he 
was   addressing,    if   the    individual   member, 
instead   of   losing   himself   *'in   a   mystery," 
kept  his  own  individuaUty,  in  order  to  con- 
tribute his  own  edifying  gift  to  the  common 
life.     Wherein  this  common  life  consists  we 
have  yet  further  to  see  in  what  follows. 
The  third  of  the  conditions  for  the  existence 
^   Of  the  community  which  my  definition  em- 
phasizes consists  in  the  fact  that  the  ideally 
extended  past  and  future  selves  of  the  mem- 
bers include  at  least  some  events  which  are, 
for  all  these  selves,  identical.     This  third  con- 

68 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

dition  is  the  one  which  furnishes  both  the 
most  exact,  the  most  widely  variable,  and  the 
most  important  of  the  motives  which  warrant 
us  in  caUing  a  community  a  real  unit.  The 
PauHne  metaphor  of  the  body  and  the  mem- 
bers finds,  in  this  third  condition,  its  most 
significant  basis,  —  a  basis  capable  of  exact 
description. 


\ 


IV 

In  addition  to  the  instance  which  I  cited  at 
the  last  time,  when  I  mentioned  the  New 
Zealanders  and  their  legendary  canoes,  other 
and  much  more  important  illustrations  may 
here  serve  to  remind  us  how  a  single  common 
past  or  future  event  may  be  the  central  means 
of  uniting  many  selves  in  one  spiritual  com-' 
munity.  For  the  Pauline  churches  the  ideal 
memory  of  their  Lord's  death  and  resurrec- 
tion, defined  in  terms  of  the  faith  which  the 
missionary  apostle  delivered  to  them  in  his 
teaching,  was,  for  each  believer,  an  acknowl- 
edged occurrence  in  his  own  past.  For  each 
one    was    taught    the    faith,     "In    that  one 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
event   my   individual   salvation   was   accom- 
plished." 

This  faith  has  informed  ever  since  the  ideal 
memory  upon  which  Christian  tradition  has 
most  of  all  depended  for  the  establishment  and 
the  preservation  of  its  own  community.     If 
we  speak  in  terms  of  social  psychology,  we 
are  obhged,  I  think,  to  regard  this  belief  as 
the  product  of  the  life  of  the  earliest  Christian 
community  itself.     But  once  established,  and 
then  transmitted  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion,   this    same   belief    has  been  ceaselessly 
recreative  of  the  communities  of  each  suc- 
ceeding age.     And  the  various  forms  of  the 
Christian  Church,  —  its   hierarchical  institu- 
tions, its  schisms,  its  reformations,  its  sects, 
its  heresies,  have  been  varied,  differentiated, 
or  divided,  or  otherwise  transformed,  accord- 
ing as  the  individual  believers  who  made  up 
any  group  of  followers  of  Christian  tradition 
have  conceived,  each  his  own  personal  Ufe 
as  including  and  as  determined  by  that  one 
ideal   event   thus   remembered,    namely,    his 
Lord's  death  and  resurrection. 

70 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

Since  the  early  Church  was  aware  of  this 
dependence  of  its  community  upon  its  memory, 
it  instinctively  resisted  every  effort  to  deprive 
that  memory  of  definiteness,  to  explain  it 
away  as  the  Gnostic  heresies  did,  or  to  trans- 
form it  from  a  memorv  into  anv  sort  of  con- 
scious  allegory.  The  idealized  memory,  the 
backward  looking  faith  of  an  individual 
believer,  must  relate  to  events  that  seem  to 
him  living  and  concrete.  Hence  the  early 
Church  insisted  upon  the  words,  "Suffered 
under  Pontius  Pilate."  The  religious  instinct 
w^hich  thus  insisted  w^as  true  to  its  own  needs. 
A  very  definite  event  must  be  viewed  by  each 
believer  as  part  of  the  history  of  his  own 
personal  salvation.  Otherwise  the  com- 
munity would  lose  its  coherence. 

Paul  himself,  despite  his  determination  to 
know  Christ,  not  "after  the  flesh,"  but  "after 
the  Spirit,"  was  unhesitating  and  uncom- 
promising with  regard  to  so  much  of  the  ideal 
Christian  memory  as  he  himself  desired  each 
believer  to  carry  clearly  in  mind.  Only  by 
such  common  memories  could  the  community 

71 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

be  constituted.  To  be  sure,  the  Apostle's 
Christology,  on  its  more  metaphysical  side, 
cared  little  for  such  more  precise  technical 
formulations  as  later  became  historically  im- 
portant for  the  Church  that  formulated  its 
creeds.  But  the  events  which  Paul  regarded 
as  essential  to  salvation  must  be,  as  he  held, 
plainly  set  down. 

Since  human  memory  is  naturally  sustained 
by  commemorative  acts,  Paul  laid  the  greatest 
possible  stress  upon  the  Lord's  Supper,  and 
made  the  proper  ordering  thereof  an  essential 
part  of  his  ideal  as  a  teacher.  In  this  act  of 
commemoration,  wherein  each  member  re- 
called the  origin  of  his  own  salvation,  the 
community  maintained  its  united  life. 


The  early  Church  was,  moreover,  not  only 
a  community  of  memory,  but  a  community 
of  hope.  Since,  if  the  community  was  to 
exist,  and  to  be  vigorously  alive,  each  believer 
must  keep  definite  his  own  personal  hope,  while 
the  event  for  which  all  hoped  must  be,  for 

72 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

all,  an  identical  event,  something  more  was 
needed,  in  Paul's  account  of  the  coming  end 
of  the  world,  than  the  more  dimly  conceived 
common  judgment  had  hitherto  been  in  the 
minds  of  the  Corinthians  to  whom  Paul 
wrote.  And  therefore  the  great  chapter  on 
the  resurrection  emphasizes  equally  the  com- 
mon resurrection  of  all,  and  the  very  explic- 
itly individual  immortality  of  each  man. 
Paul  uses  both  the  resurrection  of  Christ, 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  spiritual  body,  to  give 
the  sharpest  possible  outlines  to  a  picture 
which  has  ever  since  dominated  not  only  the 
traditional  Christian  religious  imagination,  but 
the  ideal  of  the  united  Church  triumphant. 

Nowhere  better  than  in  this  very  chapter 
can  one  find  an  example  of  the  precise  way  in 
which  the  fully  developed  consciousness  of  a 
community  solves  its  own  problem  of  the  one 
and  the  many,  by  clearly  conceiving  both  the 
diversity  of  the  members  and  the  unity  of 
the  body  in  terms  of  the  common  hope  for 
the  same  event. 

The  Apostle  had  to  deal  with  the  doctrine 

73 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

of   the   immortality   of   the   individual   man, 
and    also    with    the    corporate    relations    of 
humanity  and  of  the  Church  to  death  and  to 
the   end   of   all   things.     The   most  pathetic 
private   concerns   and   superstitions   of   men, 
the  most  conflicting  ideas  of  matter,  of  spirit, 
and  of  human  solidarity,  had  combined,  in 
those    days,    to    confuse    the    religious    ideas 
which  entered  into  the  life  of  the  early  Church, 
when   the   words    "death   and   resurrection" 
were  in  question.     The  Apostle  himself  was 
heir  to  a  seemingly  hopeless  tangle  of  ancient 
and  more  or  less  primitive  opinions  regarding 
the  human  self  and  the  cosmos,  regarding  the 
soul  and  the  future. 

A  mystery-religion  of  Paul's  own  time  might, 
and  often  did,  assure  the  individual  initiate 
of  his  own  immortality.  The  older  Messianic 
hope,  or  its  successor  in  the  early  Christian 
consciousness,  might  be  expressed,  and  was 
often  expressed,  in  a  picture  wherein  all 
mankind  were  together  called  before  the 
judgment  seat  at  the  end.  But  minds  whose 
ideas  upon  such  topics  came  from  various 

74 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

and  bewildering  sources,  —  minds  such  as 
those  of  Paul's  Corinthians,  might,  and  did, 
inquire:  "What  will  personally  happen  to 
me.^^  What  will  happen  to  all  mankind.'^" 
The  very  contrast  between  these  two  ques- 
tions was,  at  that  time,  novel.  The  growing 
sense  of  the  significance  of  the  individual 
self  was  struggling  against  various  more  or 
less  mystical  identifications  of  all  mankind 
with  Adam,  or  with  some  one  divine  or 
demonic  power  or  spirit.  Such  a  struggle 
still  goes  on  to-day. 

But  Paul's  task  it  was,  in  writing  this 
chapter,  to  clarify  his  own  religious  con- 
sciousness, and  to  guide  his  readers  through  the 
mazes  of  human  hope  and  fear  to  some  pre- 
cise view,  both  of  human  solidarity  and 
individual  destiny.  His  method  consisted 
in  a  definition  of  his  whole  problem  in  terms 
of  the  relation  between  the  individual,  the 
community,  and  the  divine  being  whom  he 
conceived  as  the  very  life  of  this  community. 
He  undertook  to  emphasize  the  individual 
self,  and  yet  to  insist  upon  the  unity  of  the 

75 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
Church  and  ot  its  Lord.     He  made  perfectly 
clear  in  each  believer's  mind  the  idea:    "I 
myself,  and  not  another,  am  to  witness  and 
to  take  part  in  this  last  great  change."     To 
this  end  Paul  made  use  of  the  conception  of 
the  individual  spiritual  body  of  each  man. 
But  Paul  also  dwelt  with  equal  decisiveness 
upon  the  thought,  "This  last  event  of  the 
present  world  is  to  be,  for  all  of  us,  one  event ; 
for  we  shall  all  together  arise." 

These    two    main    thoughts    of    the    great 
chapter   are   in   the   exposition   clearly   con- 
trasted and  uAited ;    and   against  this  well- 
marked  background  Paul  can  then  place  state- 
ments about  humanity  viewed  as  one  cor- 
.  porate  entity,  -  monistic  formulations,  so  to 
speak. -and   can   do   this   without   fear   of 
being  misunderstood:    "The  first  man  Adam 
became  a  living  soul.     The  last  Adam  be- 
came a  quickening  spirit.     The  first  man  is 
of  the  earth,  earthy ;    the  second  man  is  the 
Lord  from  heaven."     What  these  more  mo- 
nistic statements  about  mankind  as  one  cor- 
porate entity  are  to  mean,  is  made  clear  simply 

76 


"'"'"'"^  Tfwr  ini'iif  iAjt.i>iiMfltMaaaii>L-  afl 


THE   BODY  AND   THE   MEMBERS 

by  teaching  each  believer  to  say,  "I  shall 
myself  arise,  with  my  own  transformed  and 
incorruptible  body;"  and  also  to  say,  "This 
event  of  the  resurrection  is  one  for  all  of  us, 
for  we  shall  arise  together." 

In  such  expressions  Paul  uses  traditions 
whose  sources  were  indeed  obscure  and  whose 
meaning  was,  as  one  might  have  supposed, 
hopelessly  ambiguous.  The  interpretations 
of  these  traditions  on  Paul's  part  might  have 
been  such  as  to  lose  sight  of  the  destiny  of 
the  individual  human  being  through  a  more  or 
less  mystical  blending  of  the  whole  race. 
That  would  have  been  natural  for  a  mind 
trained  to  think  of  Adam  and  of  mankind  as 
Paul  was  trained.  Or,  again,  the  interpre- 
tation might  have  taken  the  form  of  assuring 
the  individual  believer  that  he  could  win  his 
own  immortality,  while  leaving  him  no  further 
ground  for  special  interest  in  the  community. 
Paul's  religious  genius  aims  straight  at  the 
central  problem  of  clearing  away  this  ambi- 
guity, and  of  defining  the  immortal  life,  both 
of   the    individual    and    of    the    community. 

77 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY" 

In  the  expected  resurrection,  as  Paul  pictures 
it,  the  individual  finds  his  own  life,  and  the 
community  its  common  triumph  over  all 
the  world-old  powers  of  death.  And  the  hope 
is  referred  back  again  to  the  memory.  Was 
not  Christ  raised?  By  this  synthesis  Paul 
solves  his  religious  problem,  and  defines 
sharply  the  relation  of  the  individual  and  the 

community. 

And  therefore,  whenever,  upon  the  familiar 
solemn  occasions,   this  chapter  is  read,  not 
only  is  individual  sorrow  bidden  to  transform 
itself  into  an  unearthly  hope;  but  even  upon 
earth  the  living  and  conscious  community  of 
the  faithful  celebrates  the  present  oneness  of 
spirit  in  which  it  triumphs.     And  the  death 
over  which  it  triumphs  is  the  death  of  the 
lonely  individual,  whom  faith  beholds  raised 
to  the  imperishable  life  in  the  spirit.     This 
life  in  the  spirit  is  also  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity.     For  the  individual  is  saved,  accord- 
ing to  Paul,  only  in  and  through  and  with 
the  community  and  its  Lord. 


78 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


VI 

Our  present  interest  in  these  classic  reli- 
gious illustrations  of  the  idea  of  the  com- 
munity is  not  directly  due  to  their  historical 
importance  as  parts  of  Christian  tradition; 
but  depends  upon  the  help  which  they  give  us 
in  seeing  how  a  community,  whether  it  be 
Christian  or  not,  can  really  constitute  a  single 
entity,  despite  the  multiplicity  of  its  members. 
Our  illustrations  have  brought  before  us  the 
fact  that  hope  and  memory  constitute,  in  com- 
munities, a  basis  for  an  unquestionable  con- 
sciousness of  unity,  and  that  this  common  life 
in  time  does  not  annul  the  variety  of  the  in- 
dividual members  at  any  one  present  moment. 

We  have  still  to  see,  however,  the  degree 
to  which  this  consciousness  of  unity  can  find 
expression  in  an  effectively  united  common 
life  which  not  only  contains  common  events, 
but  also  possesses  common  deeds  and  can 
arouse  a  common  love  —  a  love  which  passes 
the  love  wherewith  individuals  can  love  one 
another. 

79 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

And  here  we  reach  that  aspect  of  the  con- 
ception of  the  community  which  is  the  most 
important,  and  also  the  most  difficult  aspect. 

VII 

A   great   and   essentially   dramatic   event, 
such    as    the    imagined    resurrection    of    the 
bodies  of  all  men,  —  an  event  which  interests 
all,  and  which  fixes  the  attention  by  its  mirac- 
ulous apparition,  —  is  well  adapted  to  illustrate 
the  union  of  the  one  and  the  many  in  the 
process  of  time.     When  Paul's  genius  seized 
upon  this  picture,  —  when,  to  use  the  well- 
known  later  scholastic  phraseology,  the  spirits 
of   men   were   thus    "individuated    by   their 
bodies,"  even  while  the  event  of  the  resurrec- 
tion fixed  the  eye  of  faith   upon  one  final 
crisis  through  which  all  were  to  pass  "in  a 
moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,"  —  when 
the  Apostle  thus  instructed  the  faithful,   a 
<Treat  lesson  was  also  taught  regarding  the 
means  whereby  the  ideal  of  a  community  and 
the  harmonious   union   of   the   one   and   the 
many  can  be  rendered  brilliantly  clear  to  the 

80 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


imagination,  and  decisively  fascinating  to  the 

will. 

But  the  lives  of  communities  cannot  consist  V 


of  miraculous  crises.     A  community,  like  an 
individual  self,  must  learn  to  keep  the  con- 
sciousness of  its  unity  through  the  vicissitudes 
of    an    endlessly    shifting    and    often    dreary 
fortune.       The     monotony     of     insignificant 
events,  the  chaos  of  lesser  conflicts,  the  fric- 
tion   and    the    bickerings    of    the    members, 
the  individual  failures  and  the  mutual  mis- 
understandings which  make  the  members  of 
a   community   forget   the  common  past  and 
future,  — all   these   things  work  against  the 
conscious  unity  of  the  life  of  a   community. 
Memory  and  hope  are  alike  clouded  by  multi- 
tudes of  such  passing  events.     The  individual 
members   cannot   always   recall  the  sense  in 
which  they  identify  their  own  lives  and  selves 
with  what  has  been,  or  with  what  is  yet  to 
come. 

And  —  hardest  task  of  all  —  the  members, 
if  they  are  to  conceive  clearly  of  the  common 
life,  must  somehow  learn  to  bear  in  mind  not 


\ 


VOL.  II  —  G 


81 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


merely  those  grandly  simple  events  which, 
like  great  victories,  or  ancestral  feats,  or 
divine  interferences,  enter  into  the  life  of  the 
community  from  without,  and  thus  make 
their  impression  all  at  once. 

No,  the  true  common  life  of  the  community 
consists  of  deeds  which  are  essentially  of  the 
nature  of  processes  of  cooperation.  That  is, 
the  common  life  consists  of  deeds  which  many 
members  perform  together,  as  when  the  work- 
men in  a  factory  labor  side  by  side. 

Now  we  all  know  that  cooperation  constantly 
occurs,  and  is  necessary  to  every  form  and 
grade  of  society.  We  also  know  that  com- 
merce and  industry  and  art  and  custom  and 
language  consist  of  vast  complexes  of  cooper- 
ations. And  in  all  such  cases  many  men 
manage  in  combination  to  accomplish  what 
no  one  man,  and  no  multitude  of  men  working 
separately,  could  conceivably  bring  to  pass. 
But  what  we  now  need  to  see  is  the  way  in 
which  such  cooperations  can  become  part, 
not  only  of  the  life,  but  of  the  consciousness 
of  a  community. 

82 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


VIII 

Every  instance  of  a  process  of  cooperation 
is  an  event,  or  a  sequence  of  events.  And 
our  definition  of  a  community  requires  that, 
if  such  cooperative  activities  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  deeds  of  a  community,  there 
must  be  individuals,  each  one  of  whom  says : 
"That  cooperation,  in  which  many  distinct 
individuals  take  part,  and  in  which  I  also 
take  part,  is,  or  was,  or  will  be,  an  event  in 
my  life."  And  many  cooperating  individuals 
must  agree  in  saying  this  of  the  same  process 
in  which  they  all  cooperate. 

And  all  must  extend  such  identifications  of 
the  self  with  these  social  activities  far  into 
the  past,  or  into  the  future. 

But  it  is  notoriously  hard  —  especially  in 
our  modern  days  of  the  dreary  complexity 
of  mechanical  labor  —  for  any  individual  man 
so  to  survey,  and  so  to  take  interest  in  a  vast 
cooperative  activity  that  he  says:  "In  my 
own  ideally  extended  past  and  future  that 
activity,  its  history,  its  future,  its  significance 

83 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

as  an  event  or  sequence  of  events,  all  have 
their  ideally  significant  part.  That  activity, 
as  the  cooperation  of  many  in  one  work,  is 
also  my  life.'"  To  say  such  things  and  to 
think  such  thoughts  grow  daily  harder  for 
most  of  the  coworkers  of  a  modern  social 

order. 

Hence,  as  is  now  clear,  the  existence  of  a 
highly  organized  social  life  is  by  no  means 
identical  with  the  existence  of  what  is,  in  our 
present  and  restricted  sense,  the  life  of  a  true 
community.     On  the  contrary,  and  for  the 
most  obvious  reasons,  there  is  a  strong  mutual 
opposition  between  the  social  tendencies  which 
secure  cooperation  on  a  vast  scale,  and  the 
very  conditions  which  so  interest  the  indi- 
vidual in  the  common  life  of  his  community 
that  it  forms  part  of  his  own  ideally  extended 
life.     We  met  with  that  opposition  between 
the   more   or   less   mechanically   coSperative 
social  life,  —  the  life  of  the  social  will  on  the 
one  side,  and  the  life  of  the  true  community 
on  the  other  side,  —  when  we  were  consider- 
ing the  Pauline  doctrine  of  the  law  in  an 

84 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

earlier  lecture.     In  fact,  it  is  the  original  sin  j 
of  any  highly  developed  civilization  that  it  ^ 
breeds  cooperation  at  the  expense  of   a  loss  1/ 
of  interest  in  the  community. 

The  failure  to  see  the  reason  why  this 
opposition  between  the  tendency  to  coopera- 
tion and  the  spirit  of  the  community  exists; 
the  failure  to  sound  to  the  depths  the  origi- 
nal sin  of  man  the  social  animal,  and  of  the 
natural  social  order  which  he  creates ;  — 
such  failure,  I  repeat,  lies  at  the  basis  of 
countless  misinterpretations,  both  of  our  mod- 
ern social  problems,  and  of  the  nature  of  a 
true  community,  and  of  the  conditions  which 
make  possible  any  wider  philosophical  gen- 
eralizations of  the  idea  of  the  community. 

IX 

Men  do  not  form  a  community,  in  our 
present  restricted  sense  of  that  word,  merely 
in  so  far  as  the  men  cooperate.  They  form 
a  community,  in  our  present  limited  sense, 
when  they  not  only  cooperate,  but  accompany/ 
this  cooperation  with  that  ideal  extension  of 

85  i 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  lives  of  individuals  whereby  each  cooperat- 
ing member  says:  "This  activity  which  we 
perform  together,  this  work  of  ours,  its  past, 
its  future,  its  sequence,  its  order,  its  sense,  — 
all  these  enter  into  my  life,  and  are  the 
life  of  my  own  self  writ  large." 

Now    cooperation  results  from  conditions 
which  a  social  psychology  such  as  that  of 
Wundt  or  of  Tarde  may  analyze.     Imitation 
and    rivalry,   greed   and   ingenuity,   business 
and    pleasure,    war    and    industry,    may    all 
combine  to  make  men  so  cooperate  that  very 
large  groups  of  them  behave,  to  an  external 
observer,    as    if    they    were    units.     In    the 
broader  sense  of  the  term  "  community,"  all 
social   groups   that  behave   as   if  they   were 
units  are  regarded  as  communities.     And  we 
ourselves  called  all  such  groups  communities 
in  our  earlier  lectures  before  we  came  to  our 

new  definition. 

But  we  have  now  been  led  to  a  narrower 
application  of  the  term  "community."  It  is 
an  application  to  which  we  have  restricted 
the  term  simply  because  of  our  special  pur- 

86 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

pose  in  this  inquir>\  Using  this  restricted 
definition  of  the  term  **  community,"  we  see 
that  groups  which  cooperate  may  be  very 
far  from  constituting  communities  in  our 
narrower  sense.  We  also  see  how,  in  general, 
a  group  whose  cooperative  activities  are 
very  highly  complex  will  require  a  corre- 
spondingly long  period  of  time  to  acquire  that 
sort  of  tradition  and  of  common  expectation 
which  is  needed  to  constitute  a  community 
in  our  sense,  —  that  is,  a  community  conscious 
of  its  own  life. 

Owing  to  the  psychological  conditions  upon 
which  social  cooperation  depends,  such  co- 
operation can  very  far  outstrip,  in  the  com- 
plexity of  its  processes,  the  power  of  any 
individual  man's  wit  to  understand  its  in- 
tricacies. In  modern  times,  when  social  co- 
operation both  uses  and  is  so  largely  dominated 
by  the  industrial  arts,  the  physical  conditions 
of  cooperative  social  life  have  combined  with 
the  psychological  conditions  to  make  any 
thorough  understanding  of  the  cooperative 
processes  upon  which  we  all  depend  simply 

87 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

hopeless  for  the  individual,  except  within 
some  narrow  range.  Experts  become  well 
acquainted  with  aspects  of  these  forms  of 
cooperation  which  their  own  callings  involve. 
Less  expert  workers  understand  a  less  range 
of  the  cooperative  processes  in  which  they 
take  part.  Most  individuals,  in  most  of 
their  work,  have  to  cooperate  as  the  cogs 
cooperate  in  the  wheels  of  a  mechanism. 
They  work  together ;  but  few  or  none  of  , 
them    know   how    they   cooperate,   or   what 

they  must  do. 

But  the  true  community,  in  our  present 
restricted  sense  of  the  word,  depends  for  its 
genuine  common  life  upon  such  cooperative 
activities   that  the  individuals   who  partici- 
pate in  these  common  activities  understand 
enough  to  be  able,  first,  to  direct  their  own 
deeds  of  cooperation;    secondly,  to  observe 
the  deeds  of  their  individual  fellow  workers, 
and  thirdly  to  know  that,  without  just  this 
combination,   this   order,   this  interaction  of 
the  coworking  selves,  just  this  deed  could  not 
be  accomplished  by  the  community.     So,  for 

88 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


instance,  a  chorus  or  an  orchestra  carries  on 
its    cooperative    activities.     In    these    cases 
cooperation  is  a  conscious  art.     If  hereupon 
these  cooperative  deeds,  thus  understood  by 
the  individual  coworker,  are  viewed  by  him 
as  linked,  through  an  extended  history  with 
past  and  future  deeds  of  the  community,  and 
if  he   then   identifies   his   own   life   with  this 
common  life,  and  if  his  fellow  members  agree 
in  this  identification,  then  indeed  the  com- 
munity both  has  a  common  life,  and  is  aware 
of    the    fact.     For    then    the    individual    co- 
worker   not    only    says:     "This    past    and 
future  fortune  of  the  community  belongs  to 
my  life;"  but  also  declares:    ''This  past  and 
future   deed   of   cooperation  belongs   to   my 
life."     "This,  which  none  of  us  could  have 
done  alone,  —  this,  which  all  of  us  together 
could  not  have  accomplished  unless  we  were 
ordered  and  linked  in  precisely  this  way, — 
this  we  together  accomplished,  or  shall  yet 
accomplish ;  and  this  deed  of  all  of  us  belongs 
to  my  Ufe." 


A  community  thus  constituted  is  essentially 


n 


89 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

a  community  of  those  who  are  artists  in  some 
form  of  cooperation,  and  whose  art  consti- 
tutes, for  each  artist,  his  own  ideally  extended 
life.  But  the  life  of  an  artist  depends  upon 
his  love  for  his  art. 

The  community  is  made  possible  by  the 
fact  that  each  member  includes  in  his  own 
ideally  extended  life  the  deeds  of  cooperation 
which  the  members  accomplish.     When  these 
deeds  are  hopelessly  conaplex,  how  shall  the 
individual  member  be  able  to  regard  them 
as   genuinely   belonging   to   his   own   ideally 
extended  life  ?     He  can  no  longer  understand 
them  in  any  detail.     He  takes  part  in  them, 
willingly  or  unwillingly.     He  does  so  because 
he  is  social,  and  because  he  must.     He  works 
in    his    factory,    or    has    his    share,    whether 
greedily  or  honestly,  in  the  world's  commercial 
activities.     And    his    cooperations    may    be 
skilful;    and  this  fact  also    he    may  know. 
But  his  skill  is  largely  due  to  external  training, 
not  to  inner  expansion  of  the  ideals  of  the 
self.     And  the  more  complex  the  social  order 
grows,    the   more    all  this  cooperation  must 

90 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

tend  to  appear  to  the  individual  as  a  mere 
process  of  nature,  and  not  as  his  own  w^ork,  — 
as  a  mechanism  and  not  as  an  ideal  extension 
of  himself,  —  unless  indeed  love  supplies  what 
individual  wit  can  no  longer  accomplish. 

X 

If  a  social  order,  however  complex  it  may 
be,  actually  wins  and  keeps  the  love  of  its 
members ;  so  that,  —  however  little  they 
are  able  to  understand  the  details  of  their 
present  cooperative  activities,  —  they  still 
—  with  all  their  whole  hearts  and  their  minds 
and  their  souls,  and  their  strength  —  desire, 
each  for  himself,  that  such  cooperations  should 
go  on ;  and  if  each  member,  looking  back  to 
the  past,  rejoices  in  the  ancestors  and  the 
heroes  who  have  made  the  present  life  of 
this  social  group  possible;  and  if  he  sees  in 
these  deeds  of  former  generations  the  source 
and  support  of  his  present  love ;  and  if  each 
member  also  looks  forward  with  equal  love 
to  the  future,  —  then  indeed  love  furnishes 
that  basis  for  the  consciousness  of  the  com- 

91 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

munlty  which  intelligence,  without  love,  in  a 
highly  complex  social  realm,  can  no  longer 
furnish.  Such  love  — such  loyalty  — de- 
pends not  upon  losing  sight  of  the  variety  of 
the  callings  of  individuals,  but  upon  seeing 
in  the  successful  co6peration  of  all  the  mem- 
bers precisely  that  event  which  the  individual 
member  most  eagerly  loves  as  his  own  fulfil- 

ment. 

When  love  of  the  community,  nourished  by 

common  memories,  and  common  hope,  both 

exists  and  expresses  itself  in  devoted  individual 

lives,    it    can    constantly    tend,    despite    the 

(complexity  of  the  present  social  order,  to  keep 

the  consciousness   of   the   community   alive. 

And  when  this  takes  place,  the  identification 

of  the  loyal  individual  self  with  the  life  of  the 

community  will  tend,  both  in  ideal  and  in 

feeling,  to  identify  each  self  not  only  with  the 

distant  past  and  future  of  the  community, 

but  with  the  present  activities  of  the  whole 

social  body. 

Thus,  for  instance,  when  the  complexities 
of   business   life,   and   the   dreariness   of   the 

02 


THE   BODY   AND   THE   MEMBERS 

factory,   have,   to   our   minds,   deprived   our 
present  social  cooperations  of  all  or  of  most  of 
their  common  significance,  the  great  communal 
or  national  festivity,  bringing  to  memory  the 
great   events   of  past   and   future,    not   only 
makes  us,  for  the  moment,  feel  and  think  as 
a  community  with  reference  to  those  great 
past  and  future  events,  but  in  its  turn,  as  a 
present  event,  reacts  upon  next  day's  ordi- 
nary    labors.     The    festivity     says    to    us: 
*'We  are  one  because  of  our  common  past  and 
future,   because   of   the   national   heroes   and 
victories-    and   hopes,    and    because    we   love 
all    these    common    memories    and     hopes." 
Our   next   day's  mood,  consequent  upon  the 
festivity,  bids  us    say:  ** Since    we    are  thus 
possessed  of  this  beloved  common   past   and 
future,  let  this  consciousness  lead  each  of  us 
even   to-day   to   extend   his   ideal   self  so  as 
to  include  the  daily  work  of  all  his  fellows, 
and  to  view  his  fellow  members'  life  as  his 


own. 


>> 


Thus  memory  and  hope  tend  to  react  upon 
the  present  self,  which  finds  the  brotherhood 

93 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

of  present  labor  more  significant,  and  the 
ideal  identification  of  the  present  self  with  the 
self  of  the  neighbor  easier,  because  the  ideal 
extension   of   the   self   into   past   and   future 

has  preceded. 

And   so,  first,  each  of   us   learns    to    say : 
''This  beloved  past  and  future  life,  by  virtue 
of  the  ideal  extension,  is  my  own  life."     Then, 
finding  that  our  fellows  have  and  love  this 
past  and  future  in  common  with  us,  we  learn 
further  to  say:    ''In  this  respect  we  are  all 
one  loving  and  beloved  community."     Then 
we  take  a  further  step  and  say:  "Since  we 
are   all   members   of   this  community,  there- 
fore,  despite   our   differences,   and    our    mu- 
tual sunderings  of  inner  life,  each  of  us  can, 
and  will,  ideally  extend  his  present  self  so  as 
to  include  the  present  life  and  deeds  of  his 

fellow." 

So  it  is  that,  in  the  ideal  church,  each 
member  not  only  looks  backwards  to  the  same 
history  of  salvation  as  does  his  fellow,  but  is 
even  thereby  led  to  an  ideal  identification  of 
his  present  self  with  that  of  his  fellow  member 

94 


THE   BODY   AND  THE   MEMBERS 

that  would  not  otherwise  be  possible.  Thus, 
then,  common  memory  and  common  hope,  the 
central  possessions  of  the  community,  tend, 
when  enlivened  by  love,  to  mould  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  present,  and  to  hnk  each 
member  to  his  community  by  ideal  ties  which 
belong  to  the  moment  as  well  as  to  the  stream 
of  past  and  future  life. 

XI 

Love,  when  it  exists  and  triumphs  over  the 
complexities  which  obscure  and  confuse  the 
common  life,   thus  completes   the  conscious- 
ness of  the  community,  in  the  forms  which 
that  consciousness  can  assume  under  human 
conditions.     Such    love,    however,    must    be 
one  that  has  the  common  deeds  of  the  com- 
munity as  its  primary  object.     No  one  under- 
stands either  the  nature  of  the  loyal  life,  or 
the  place  of  love  in  the  constitution  of  the 
life  of  a  real  community,  who  conceives  such 
love   as   merely   a   longing   for   the   mystical 
blending   of   the   selves   or  for   their   mutual 
interpenetration,    and   for   that   only.     Love 

95 


y 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

says  to  the  individual:  "So  extend  your- 
/  self,  in  ideal,  that  you  aim,  with  all  your 
heart  and  your  soul  and  your  mind  and  your 
strength,  at  that  Hie  of  perfectly  definite  deeds 
which  never  can  come  to  pass  unless  all  the 
members,  despite  their  variety  and  their 
natural  narrowness,  are  in  perfect  cooperation. 
Let  this  life  be  your  art  and  also  the  art  of 
all  your  fellow  members.  Let  your  com- 
munity be  as  a  chorus,  and  not  as  a  company 
who  forget  themselves  in  a  common  trance." 
Nevertheless,  as  Paul  showed  in  the  great 
chapter,  such  love  of  the  self  for  the  com- 
munity can  be  and  will  be  not  without  its 
own  mystical  element.  For  since  we  human 
beings  are  as  narrow  in  our  individual  con- 
sciousness as  we  are,  we  cannot  ideally  extend 
ourselves  through  clearly  understanding  the 
complicated  social  activities  in  which  the 
community  is  to  take  part.  Therefore  our 
ideal  extensions  of  the  self,  when  we  love  the 
community,  and  long  to  realize  its  life  with 
intimacy,  must  needs  take  the  form  of 
acting  as  if  we  could  survey,  in  some  single 

96 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

unity  of  insight,  that  wealth  and  variety  and 
connection  which,  as  a  fact,  we  cannot  make 
present  to  our  momentary  view.  Since  true 
love  is  an  emotion,  and  since  emotions  are 
present  affections  of  the  self,  love,  in  longing 
for  its  own  increase,  and  for  its  own  fulfil- 
ment, inevitably  longs  to  find  what  it  loves  as 
a  fact  of  experience,  and  to  be  in  the  imme- 
diate presence  of  its  beloved.  Therefore, 
the  love  of  a  community  (a  love  which, 
as  we  now  see,  is  devoted  to  desiring  the 
realization  of  an  overwhelmingly  vast  variety 
and  unity  of  cooperations),  is,  as  an  emotion, 
discontent  with  all  the  present  sundering  of 
the  selves,  and  with  all  the  present  problems 
and  mysteries  of  the  social  order.  Such  love, 
then,  restless  with  the  narrowness  of  our 
momentary  view  of  our  common  Ufe,  desires 
this  common  life  to  be  an  immediate  presence 
for  all  of  us.  Such  an  immediate  presence 
of  all  the  community  to  all  the  members 
would  be  indeed,  if  it  could  wholly  and  simply 
take  place,  a  mere  blending  of  the  selves,  — 
an  interpenetration  in  which  the  individuals 


VOL.  II  —  H 


97 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

vanished,  and  in  which,  for  that  very  reason, 
the  real  community  would  also  be  lost. 

Love^j^ir.the  love  of  Paul's  great  chapter, 
—  the  loyalty  which  stands  at  the  centre  of 
the  Christian  consciousness,  —  is,  as  an  emo- 
tion, a  longing  for  such  a  mystical  blending 
of  the  selves.  This  longing  is  present  in 
Paul's  account.  It  is  in  so  far  not  the  whole 
of  charity.  It  is  simply  the  mystical  aspect 
of  the  love  for  the  community. 

But  the  Pauline  charity  is  not  merely  an 
emotion.  It  is  an  interpretation.  The  ideal 
extension  of  the  self  gets  a  full  and  concrete 
meaning  only  by  being  actively  expressed  in 
the  new  deeds  of  each  individual  life.  Unless 
each  man  knows  how  distinct  he  is  from  the 
whole  community  and  from  every  member  of 
it,  he  cannot  render  to  the  community  what 
love  demands,  —  namely,  the  devoted  work. 
Love  may  be  mystical,  and  work  should  be 
directed  by  clearly  outlined  intelligence;  but 
the  loyal  spirit  depends  upon  this  union  of  a 
longing  for  unity  with  a  will  which  needs  its 
own  expression  in  works  of  loyal  art. 

98 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 


XII 


/I 


The  doctrine  of  the  two  levels  of  human 
existence;  the  nature  of  a  real  community : 
the  sense  in  which  there  can  be,  in  individual 
human  beings,  despite  their  narrow^ness,  their  I 
variety,  and  their  sundered  present  lives,  a 
genuine  consciousness  of  the  life  of  a  com- 
munity whereof  they  are  members: — these 
matters  we  have  now,  within  our  limits, 
interpreted.  The  time-process,  and  the  ideal 
extensions  of  the  self  in  this  time-process,  lie? 
at  the  basis  of  the  whole  theory  of  the  com- 
munity. The  union  and  the  contrast  of  the 
one  and  the  many  in  the  community,  and  the 
relation  of  the  mystical  element  in  our  con- 
sciousness of  the  community  to  the  active  in- 
terpretation of  the  loyal  life,  these  things  have 
also  been  reviewed.  Incidentally,  so  to  speak, 
we  have  suggested  further  reasons  why  loyalty, 
whether  in  its  distinctively  Christian  forms, 
or  in  any  others,  is  a  saving  principle  whenever 
it  appears  in  an  individual  human  life.  For 
in  the  love  of  a  community  the  individual  ob- 

99 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

tains,  for  his  ideally  extended  self,  precisely  the 
unity,  the  wealth,  and  the  harmony  of  plan 
which  his  sundered  natural  existence  never 
supplies. 

Yet  it  must  be  not  merely  admitted,  but  em- 
phasized, that  all  such  analyses  of  the  sort  of  life 
and  of  interpretation  upon  which  communities 
and  the  loyalty  of  their  members  depend,  does 
not  and  cannot  explain  the  origin  of  loyalty,  the 
true  sources  of  grace,  and  the  way  in  which 
communities  of  high  level  come  into  existence. 

On  the  contrary,  all  the  foregoing  account 
of  what  a  community  is  shows  how  the  true 
spirit  of  loyalty,  and  the  highest  level  of  the 
consciousness  of  a  human  community,  is  at 
once  so  precious,  and  so  difficult  to  create. 

The  individual  man  naturally,  but  capri- 
ciously, loves  both  himself  and  his  fellow-man, 
according  as  passion,  pity,  memory,  and  hope 
move  him.  Social  training  tends  to  sharpen 
the  contrasts  between  the  self  and  the  fellow- 
man;  and  higher  cultivation,  under  these 
conditions  of  complicated  social  cooperation 
which  we  have  just  pointed  out,  indeed  makes 

100 


^^'^^'^''''''^/''^'^'^^''If^rSSIS^i'*^^'*^^ '''"% 


THE   BODY   AND    THE   MEMBERS 

a  man  highly  conscious  that  he  depends  upon 
his  community,  but  also  renders  him  equally 
conscious  that,  as  an  individual,  he  is  much 
beset  by  the  complexities  of  the  social  will, 
and  does  not  always  love  his  community, 
or  any  community.  Neither  the  origin  nor 
the  essence  of  loyalty  is  explained  by  man's 
tendencies  to  love  his  individual  fellow-man. 
It  is  true  that,  within  the  limits  of  his  power 
to  understand  his  social  order,  the  conditions 
which  make  a  man  conscious  of  his  community 
also  imply  that  the  man  should  in  some  re- 
spects identify  his  life  with  that.  But  I  may 
well  know  that  the  history,  the  future,  the 
whole  meaning  of  my  community  are  bound 
up  with  my  own  life ;  and  yet  it  is  not  neces- 
sary that  on  that  account  I  should  whole- 
heartedly love  my  own  life.  I  may  be  a  pessi- 
mist.    Or  I  may  be  simply  discontented.     I 

« 

may  desire  to  escape  from  the  life  that  I  have. 
And  I  may  be  aware  that  my  fellows,  for  the 
most  part,  also  long  to  escape. 

That  the  community  is  above  my  own  in- 
dividual level  I  shall  readily  recognize,  since 

101 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  community  is  indeed  vastly  more  skilful 
and  incomparably  more  powerful  than  I  can 
ever  become.     But  what  is  thus  above  me  I 
need  not  on  that  account  be  ready  wholly  to 
love.     To  be  sure,  that  man  is  indeed  a  sad 
victim  of  a  misunderstood  life  who  is  himself 
able  to  be  clearly  aware  of  his  community,  to 
identify  its  history  and  its  future,  at  least  in 
part,  with  his  own  ideally  extended  life,  and 
who  is  yet  wholly  unable  ever  to  love  the  life 
which  is  thus  linked  with  his  own.     Yet  there 
remains  the  fate  which  Paul  so  emphasized, 
and  which  has  determined  the  whole  history 
of  the  Christian  consciousness :  Knowledge  of 
the  community  is  not  love  of  the  community. 
Love,  when  it  comes,  comes  as  from  above. 

Especially  is  this  true  of  the  love  of  the 
ideal  community  of  all  mankind.  I  can  be 
genuinely  in  love  with  the  community  only 
in  case  I  have  somehow  fallen  in  love  with  the 
universe.  The  problem  of  love  is  human. 
The  solution  of  the  problem,  if  it  comes  at  all, 
will  be,  in  its  meaning,  superhuman,  and 
divine,  if  there  be  anything  divine. 

102 


THE  BODY  AND  THE  MEMBERS 

What  our  definition  of  the  communitv  ena- 
bles  us  to  add  to  our  former  views  of  the  mean-  ^^ 
ing  of  loyalty  is  simply  this :  If  the  universe  ^ 
proves  to  be,  in  any  sense,  of  the  nature  of  a 
community,  then  love  for  this  community, 
and  for  God,  will  not  mean  merely  love  for 
losing  the  self,  or  for  losing  the  many  selves, 
in  any  interpenetration  of  selves.  If  one  1 
can  find  that  all  humanity,  in  the  sense  of  our 
definition,  constitutes  a  real  community,  or 
that  the  world  itself  is,  in  any  genuine  way, 
of  the  nature  of  a  community  such  as  we  have 
defined  ;  and  if  hereupon  we  can  come  to  love 
this  real  community,  |—  then  the  one  and  the 
many,  the  body  and  the  members,  our  beloved 
and  ourselves,  will  be  joined  in  a  life  in  which 
we  shall  be  both  preserved  as  individuals,  and 
yet  united  to  that  which  we  love.  / 

XIII 

Plainly  a  metaphysical  study  of  the  question 
whether  the  universe  is  a  communitv  will  be 
as  powerless  as  the  foregoing  analysis  of  the 
real  nature  of  human  communities  to  explain 

103 


i 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  origin  of  love,  or  to  make  any  one  fall  in 
love  with  the  universe.     Yet  something  has 
been  gained  by  our  analysis  of  the  problem 
which,  from  this  point  onwards,  determines 
our  metaphysical  inquiry.     If  our  results  are 
in  any  way  positive,  they  may  enable  us  to 
view   the   problem   of   Christianity,    that   is, 
the  problem  of  the  religion  of  loyalty,  in  a 
larger   perspective   than   that   which   human 
history,  when  considered  alone,  determines. 
The    favorite    methods    of    approaching    the 
metaphysical    problems    of  theology  end  by 
leaving  the  individual  alone  with  God,  in  a 
realm  which  seems,  to  many  minds,  a  realm  of 
merely  concepts,  of  intellectual  abstractions, 
of  barren  theories.     The  ways  which  are  just 
now  in  favor  in  the  philosophy  of  religion 
seem  to  end  in  leaving  the  individual  equally 
alone  with  his  intuitions,  his  lurid  experiences 
of  sudden  conversion,  or  his  ineffable  mysteries 

of  saintly  peace. 

May  we  not  hope  to  gain  by  a  method 
which  follows  the  plan  now  outlined  ?  This 
method,' fir^  encourages  a  man  to  interpret 

104 


THE   BODY   AND   THE   MEMBERS 

his  own  individual  self  in  terms  of  the  largest 
ideal  extension  of  that  self  in  time  which  his 
reasonable  will  can  acknowledge  as  worthy 
of  the  aims  of  his  life.  ^  Secondly,  this  method 
bids  a  man  consider  what  right  he  has  to  in- 
terpret the  life  from  which  he  springs,  in  the 
midst  of  which  he  now  lives,  as  a  life  that  in 
any  universal  sense  cooperates  with  his  own 
and  ideally  expresses  its  own  meaning  so  as 
to  meet  with  his  own,  and  to  have  a  history 
identical  with  his  own.^  Thirdly,  this  method 
directs  us  to  inquire  how  far,  in  the  social 
order  to  which  we  unquestionably  belong, 
there  are  features  such  as  warrant  us  in  hoping 
that,  in  the  world's  community,  our  highest 
love  may  yet  find  its  warrant  and  its  fulfilment. 
Whatever  the  fortunes  of  the  quest  may  be, 
we  have  now  defined  its  plan,  and  have  show^n 
its  perfectly  definite  relation  to  the  historical 
problem  of  Christianity. 


105 


XI 


PERCEPTION,  CONCEPTION,  AND 
INTERPRETATION 


LECTURE  XI 

PERCEPTION,  CONCEPTION,  AND 
INTERPRETATION 

TN  defining  what  constitutes  a  community 
-^  I  have  repeatedly  mentioned  processes  of 
Interpretation.  The  word  "interpretation" 
is  well  known  ;  and  students  of  the  humanities 
have  special  reasons  for  using  it  frequently. 
When  one  calls  an  opinion  about  the  self  an 
interpretation,  one  is  not  employing  language 
that  is  familiar  only  to  philosophers.  When  a 
stranger  in  a  foreign  land  desires  the  services 
of  an  interpreter,  when  a  philologist  oflFers 
his  rendering  of  a  text,  when  a  judge  con- 
strues a  statute,  some  kind  of  interpretation 
is  in  question.  And  the  process  of  interpre- 
tation, whatever  it  is,  is  intended  to  meet 
human  needs  which  are  as  well  known  as 
they  are  vital.  Such  needs  determine,  as  we 
shall  see,  whatever  is  humane  and  articu- 
late in  the  whole  conduct  and  texture  of  our 
lives. 

109 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


Yet  if  we  ask,  What  is  an  interpretation  ? 
—  the  answer  is  not  easy.  Nor  is  it  made 
much  easier  by  stating  the  question  in  the  form  : 
What  does  one  desire  who  seeks  for  an  inter- 
pretation ?  What  does  one  gain,  or  create,  or 
acknowledge  who  accepts  an  interpretation  ? 

Our  investigation  has  reached  the  pomt 
where  it  is  necessary  to  face  these  questions, 
as  well  as  some  others  closely  related  to  them. 
For,  as  a  fact,  to  inquire  what  the  process  of 
interpretation  is,  takes  us  at  once  to  the  very 
heart  of  philosophy,  throws  a  light  both  on 
the  oldest  and  on  the  latest  issues  of  meta- 
physical thought,  and  has  an  especially  close 
connection  with  the  special  topics  to  which 
this  course  is  devoted. 

II 

First,  then,  let  me  briefly  recall  the  ways  in 
vvhich  we  have  already  been  brought  into  con- 
tact with  questions  involving  the  nature  of 

interpretation. 

no 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

Our  whole  undertaking  is  an  eflFort  to  inter- 
pret vital  features  of  Christianity.  Each  of 
the  three  ideas  which  I  have  viewed  as  essen- 
tial to  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  had  to  be 
interpreted  first  for  itself,  and  then  in  its  con- 
nection with  the  others.  You  might  have 
supposed  that,  when  we  turned  to  our  meta- 
physical problems,  we  should  henceforth  have 
to  do  with  questions  of  fact,  and  not  with 
interpretations.  But  we  have  found  that  we 
could  not  decide  how  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life  is  related  to  the  real  world  without 
defining  what  we  mean  by  a  community.  A 
community,  as  we  have  seen,  depends  for 
its  very  constitution  upon  the  way  in  which 
each  of  its  members  interprets  himself  and  his 
life.  For  the  rest,  nobody's  self  is  either  a 
mere  datum  or  an  abstract  conception.  A 
self  is  a  life  whose  unity  and  connectedness 
depend  upon  some  sort  of  interpretation  of 
plans,  of  memories,  of  hopes,  and  of  deeds.  If, 
then,  there  are  communities,  there  are  many 
selves  who,  despite  their  variety,  so  interpret 
their  lives  that  all  these  lives,  taken  together, 

111 


[ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

get  the  type  of  unity  which  our  last  lecture 
characterized.  Were  there,  then,  no  inter- 
pretations  in  the  world,  there  would  be  neither 
selves  nor  communities.  Thus  our  effort  to 
study  matters  of  fact  led  us  back  to  problems 
of  interpretation.  These  latter  problems  ob- 
viously dominate  every  serious  inquiry  into 
our  problem  of  Christianity. 

What,  however,  is  any  philosophy  but  an 
interpretation  either  of  life,  or  of  the  universe, 
or  of  both?  Does  there  exist,  then,  any 
student  of  universally  interesting  issues  who 
is  not  concerned  with  an  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion. What  is  an  interpretation  ? 

Possibly  these  illustrations  of  our  topic, 
few  as  they  are,  seem  already  so  various  in 
their  charactjers  as  to  suggest  that  the  term 
"  interpretation  "  may  be  too  vague  in  its  appli- 
cations to  admit  of  precise  definition.  A  ren- 
dering of  a  text  written  in  a  foreign  tongue ; 
a  judge's  construction  of  a  statute ;  a  man's 
interpretation  of  himself  and  of  his  own  life; 
our  own  philosophical  interpretation  of  this 
or  of  that  religious  idea;    and  the  practical 

112 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

interpretation  of  our  destiny,  or  of  God, 
which  a  great  historical  religion  itself  seems 
to  have  taught  to  the  faithful;  or,  finally, 
a  metaphysical  interpretation  of  the  universe, 
—  what  —  so  you  may  ask  —  have  all  these 
things  in  common  ?  What  value  can  there  be 
in  attempting  to  fix  by  a  definition  such  fluent 
and  uncontrollable  interests  as  inspire  what 
various  people  may  call  by  the  common  name 
interpretation  ? 


Ill 

I  reply  that,  beneath  all  this  variety  in  the 
special  motives  which  lead  men  to  interpret 
objects,  there  exists  a  very  definable  unity  of 
purpose.  Look  more  closely,  and  you  shall  see 
that  to  interpret,  or  to  attempt  an  interpreta- 
tion, is  to  assume  an  attitude  of  mind  which 
differs,  in  a  notable  way,  from  the  other  at- 
titudes present  in  the  intelligent  activities  of 
men;  while  this  attitude  remains  essentially 
the  same  amidst  very  great  varieties,  both  in 
the  individual  interpreters  and  in  the  inter- 
pretations which  they  seek,  or  undertake,  or 


VOL.  n  —  I 


113 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

'accept.  Interpretation,  viewed  as  a  mental 
process,  or  as  a  type  of  knowledge,  differs  from 
other  mental  processes  and  types  of  knowledge 
in  the  objects  to  which  it  is  properly  applied, 
in  the  relations  in  which  it  stands  to  these 
objects,  and  in  the  ends  which  it  serves. 

In  order  to  show  you  that  this  is  the  case,  I 
must  summarize  in  my  own  way  some  still 
neglected  opinions  which  were  first  set  forth, 
in  outline,  more  than  forty  years  ago  by  our 
American  logician,  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  in 
papers  which  have  been  little  read,  but  which, 
to  my  mind,  remain  of  very  high  value  as 
guides  of  inquiry,  both  in  Logic  and  in  the 
Theory  of  Knowledge.^ 

iQf  the  early  papers  of  Mr.  Charles  Peirce  to  which  reference  is 
here  made,  the  most  important  are :  — 

1.  In  the    Proceedings  of  the  Ameriean    Academy    of   AHs   and 
Sciences,  a  paper :     "On  a  New  List  of  Categories,"  May  U,  1867. 

2.  In  the  Journal  of  Specukitive  Philosophy,  Vol.  II  (1868-1869) : 
"Questions  concerning  Certain  Faculties  claimed  for  Man." 

3.  Id.:    "Some  Consequences  of  Four  Incapacities." 

4.  Id.:  "Grounds  of  the  Validity  of  the  Laws  of  Logic;  Further 
Consequences  of  Four  Incapacities." 

In  addition  to  these  early  papers  we  may  mention :  — 

6.  Article  "Sign"  in   Baldwin's  "Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and 

Psychology,"  —  a  brief  statement  regarding  an  important  point  of 

Peirce's  theory. 

114 


NATURE   OF  INTERPRETATION 

Mr.  Charles  Peirce  has  become  best  known 
to  the  general  public  by  the  part  which  Will- 
iam James  assigned  to  him  as  the  inventor  of 
the  term  "  Pragmatism,"  and  as,  in  some  sense, 
the  founder  of  the  form  of  Pragmatism  which 
James  first  made  his  own,  and  then  developed 
so  independently  and  so  significantly.     But 
by  a  small  and  grateful  company  of  philosophi- 
cal students,  Mr.  Peirce  is  prized,  not  solely, 
and  not,  I  think,  mainly  for  his  part  in  the 
early  history  of  Pragmatism,  but  for  his  con- 
tributions to  Logic,  and  for  those  remarkable 
cosmological  speculations  which  James  also,' 
in  his  lectures  on  the  Pluralistic  Universe  (as 
some  of  you  will  remember),  heartily  acknowl- 
edged. 

Those  ideas  of  Charles  Peirce  about  Inter- 
pretation to  which  I  shall  here  refer,  never, 
so  far  as  I  know,  attracted  William  James's 
personal  attention  at  any  time.  I  may  add 
that,  until  recently,  I  myself  never  appreciated 
their  significance.  In  acknowledging  here  my 
present  indebtedness  to  these  ideas,  I  have 
to  add  that,  in  this  place,  there  is  no  room 

115 


( 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

to  expound  them  at  length.    The  context  in 
which  these  views  appear,  both  in  the  earhest 
of  the  pubhshed  logical  papers  of  Peirce  (about 
1868),  and  in  many  of  his  later  discussions, 
is  always  very  technical,  and  is  such  that  no 
adequate   discussion   of   the   issues   involved 
could    be    presented    in    a    brief    statement. 
Moreover,  it  is  proper  to  say  that  Charles 
Peirce  cannot  be  held  responsible  for  the  use 
that  I  shall  here  make  of  his  opinions,  or  for 
any  of  the  conclusions  that  I  base  upon  tuem. 
There  is  one  additional  matter  which  should 
be  emphasized  at  the  outset.   Peirce's  opinions 
as  to  the  nature  of  interpretation  were  m  no 
wise  influenced  by  Hegel,  or  by  the  tradition 
of  German  ideaUsm.     He  formed  them  on  the 
basis  of  his  own  early  scientific  studies,  and 
of  his  extensive,  although  always  very  mde- 
pendent,  interest  in  the  history  of  scholastic 
logic.     With  recent  idealism  this  "father  of 
Pragmatism"   has   always  felt  only   a   very 
qualified  sympathy,  and  has  frequently  ex- 
pressed no  Uttle  dissatisfaction.     Some  twelve 
years  ago,  just  after  I  had  printed  a  book  on 

116 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

general  philosophy,  Mr.  Charles  Peirce  wrote 
to  me,  in  a  letter  of  kindly  acknowledgment, 
the  words :  ''But,  when  I  read  you,  I  do  wish 
that  you  would  study  logic.  You  need  it  so 
much." 

Abandoning,  then,  any  effort  to  state 
Peirce's  case  as  he  stated  it,  let  me  next  call 
attention  to  matters  which  I  should  never 
have  viewed  as  I  now  view  them  without  his 
direct  or  indirect  aid. 

IV 

The  contrast  between  the  cognitive  pro- 
cesses called,  respectively,  perception  and 
conception,  dominates  a  great  part  of  the 
history  of  philosophy.  This  contrast  is 
usually  so  defined  as  to  involve  a  dual  classi- 
fication of  our  cognitive  processes.  When  one 
asks  which  of  the  two  processes,  perception 
or  conception,  gives  us  the  more  significant 
guidance,  or  is  the  original  from  which  the 
other  is  derived,  or  is  the  ideal  process  whereof 
the  other  is  the  degenerate  fellow,  such  a  dual 
classification  is  in  possession  of  the  field. 

117 


^ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

This  classic  dual  opposition  was  expressed, 
in  characteristically  finished  fashion,  at  the 
outset  of  the  lectures  which  Professor  Bergson 
read,  in  May  of  last  year,  at  the  invitation 
of  the  University  of  Oxford.     You  all  remem- 
ber his  words:     "If   our  power  of  external 
and  internal  perception  were  unlimited,  we 
should  never  make  use  of  our  power  to  con- 
ceive, or  of  our  power  to  reason.     To  con- 
ceive is  a  makeshift  in  the  cases  where  one 
cannot  perceive ;    and  one  reasons  only  in  so 
far  as  one  needs  to  fill  gaps  in  our  outer  or 
inner  perception,  or  to  extend  the  range  of 

perception." 

Here,  as  is  obvious,  there  is  no  recognition 
of  the  possible  or  actual  existence  of  a  third 
type  of  cognitive  process,  which  is  neither 
perception  nor  conception.  The  assertion 
that  conception  is  our  makeshift  when  per- 
ception is  hmited,  and  that  unlimited  per- 
ception, by  rendering  conception  superfluous, 
would  supply  us  with  that  grade  of  intuition 
which  we,  in  ideal,  attribute  to  a  divine  being, 
involves  the  postulate  that  we  face  the  alter- 

118 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

native:     Either  perception,   or  else   concep- 
tion. 

But  if  one  were  to  oppose  the  thesis  just 
cited  by  declaring  in  favor  of  conception  as 
against  perception;   if  one  were  to  assert  that 
perception  deceives  us  with  vain  show,  and 
that  conception  alone  can  bring  us  face  to 
face  with  reahty;    if,  in  short,  one  were  to 
prefer   Plato   to   Bergson,  —  one    would   not 
thereby  necessarily  be  led  to  abandon,  —  one 
might,  on  the  contrary,  all  the  more  emphasize 
this  dual  classification  of   the   possible   cog- 
nitive processes.     In   such   a   predominantly 
duaHstic  view  of  the  classification  of  knowl- 
edge, both  rationalism  and  empiricism  have, 
on  the  whole,  agreed,  throughout  the  history 
of  thought.     Kant  and  James,  Bergson  and 
Mr.  Bertrand  Russell,  are,  in  this  respect,  at 
one. 

To  be  sure,  in  addition  to  perception  and 
conception,  reason  and  the  reasoning  process 
have  been  very  frequently  recognized  as 
having  some  sort  of  existence  for  themselves, 
over  and  above  the  processes  of  simple  per- 
ns 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
ception  and  conception.     Yet  when  Bergson 
speaks  of  reasoning,  in  the  passage  just  cited 
from  his  Oxford  lecture,  reasoning,  for  him, 
means  a  special  form  or  grade  of  the  concep- 
tual process  itself,  and  is  therefore  no  third 
type   of    cognition.     When    Kant    made    his 
well-known  triadic  distinctions  of  sense,  under- 
standing, and  reason,  assigning  to  sense  the 
power   of   perceiving,   to   understanding   the 
power  to  form  and  to  use  concepts,  and  to 
reason  a  third  function  which  Kant  did  not 
always  define  in  the  same  way,  —  he  did  not 
really  succeed  in  escaping  from  the  classical 
duaUsm  with  regard  to  the  processes  of  cogni- 
tion.    For  Kant's  account  of  reason  assigns 
to  it,  in  general,  a  high  grade  of  conceptual 
functions,  as  opposed  to  perceptual  functions ; 
and  thus  still  depends  upon  the  dual  contrast 
between   perception    and    conception.     Kant 
is  nearest  to  defining  a  third  type  of  cognitive 
process  in  many  of  his  accounts  of  what  he 
calles  the  UHheilskraft.    But  he  never  con- 
sistently maintains  a  triadic  classification  of 
the  cognitive  processes. 

120 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 


Despite  this  prevalence  of  the  dual  classi- 
fication of  our  cognitive  processes,  most  of 
us  will  readily  acknowledge  that,  in  our  real 
life,   we  human   beings  are  never  possessed 
either  of  pure  perception  or  of  pure  concep- 
tion.    In  ideal,  we  can  define  an  intuitive  type 
of  knowledge,  which  should  merely  see,  and 
which  should  never  think.     In  an  equally  ideal 
fashion,  we  can  imagine  the  possibility  of  a 
pure  thought,  which  should  be  wholly  absorbed 
in  conceptions,  which  should  have  as  its  sole 
real  object  a  realm  of  universals,  and  which 
should  ignore  all  sensible  data.     But  we  mor- 
tals live  the  intelligent  part  of  our  lives  through 
some  sort  of  more  or  less  imperfect  union  or 
synthesis  of  conception  and  perception. 

In  recent  discussion  it  has  become  almost  a 
commonplace  to  recognize  this  union  as  con- 
stantly exemplified  in  human  experience.  In 
this  one  respect,  to-day,  empiricists  and 
rationalists,  pragmatists  and  intellectualists, 
are  accustomed  to  agree,  although  great  dif- 

121 


iH 


ii 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

ferences  arise  with  regard  to  what  union  of 
perception  and  conception  constitutes  such 
knowledge  as  we  human  beings  can  hopefully 
pursue  or  actually  possess. 

Kant,  assuring  us  that  conceptions  with- 
out perceptions  are  ^  empty,"  and  that  per- 
ceptions without  conceptions  are  ''bhnd,"  sets 
forth,  in  his  theory  of  knowledge,  the  well- 
known  account  of  how  the  "  spontaneity "  of 
the  intellect  actively  combines  the  perceptual 
data,  and  brings  the  so-called  "  manifold  of 
sense"  to  "unity  of  conception." 

Recent  pragmatism,  laying  stress  upon  the 
-practical"  character  of  every  human  cogm- 
tive  process,  depicts  the  life  of  knowledge  as 
a  dramatic  pursuit  of  perceptions,  -  a  pur- 
suit guided  by  the  " leadings"  which  our  con- 
ceptions determine,  and  which,  in  some  sense, 
simply  constitute  our  conceptions,  in  so  far  as 
these  have  genuine  life. 

When,  a  number  of  years  ago,  I  began  a 
general  metaphysical  inquiry  by  defining  an 
idea  as  a  "  plan  of  action,"  and  thereupon  de- 
veloped a  theory  of  knowledge  and  of  reality, 

122 


III 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

upon  bases  which  this  definition  helped  me 
to  formulate,  I  was  making  my  own  use  of 
thoughts  which,  in  their  outlines,  are  at  the 
present  day  common  property.  The  outcome 
of  my  own  individual  use  of  this  definition  was 
a  sort  of  absolute  pragmatism,  which  has 
never  been  pleasing  either  to  rationalists  or  to 
empiricists,  either  to  pragmatists  or  to  the 
ruHng  type  of  absolutists.  But  in  so  far  as  I 
simply  insisted  upon  the  active  meaning  of 
ideas,  my  statement  had  something  in  com- 
mon with  many  forms  of  current  opinion  which 
agree  with  one  another  in  hardly  any  other  re- 
spect. Only  the  more  uncompromising  of  the 
mystics  still  seek  for  knowledge  in  a  silent  land 
of  absolute  intuition,  where  the  intellect  finally 
lays  down  its  conceptual  tools,  and  rests  from 
its  pragmatic  labors,  while  its  works  do  not 
follow  it,  but  are  simply  forgotten,  and  are  as  if 
they  never  had  been.  Those  of  us  who  are  not 
such  uncompromising  mystics,  view  accessible 
human  knowledge  neither  as  pure  perception 
nor  as  pure  conception,  but  always  as  depend- 
ing upon  the  marriage  of  the  two  processes. 

123 


« 


I 


i 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

VI 

Yet  such  a  recognition  of  an  active  synthe- 
sis of  perception  and  conception  does  not  by 
itself  enable  us  to  define  a  genuinely  triadic 
classification  of  the  types  of  knowing  pro- 
cesses.    Let  me  illustrate  this  fact  by  another 
quotation  from  Bergson.     In  a  passage  in  the 
first  of  his  two  Oxford  lectures,  our  author 
says:    "I  do  not  deny  the  usefulness  of  ab- 
stract and  general  ideas,  —  any  more  than  I 
question  the  value  of  bank-notes.     But  just 
as  the  note  is  only  a  promise  to  pay  cash, 
so  a  conception  has  value  only  by  virtue  of 
the  eventual  perceptions  for  which  it  stands." 
In  these  words,  as  you  see,  the  antithesis, 
-conception,"    "perception,"   corresponds  to 
the    antithesis,    "bank-note"    and    ''cash," 
and    the    other    antithesis,    "credit-value," 
"cash-value."   All  these  corresponding  antith- 
eses involve  or  depend  upon  dual  classifica- 
tions.    Now  it  is  true,  and  is  expressly  pointed 
out  by  Bergson,  that  the  members  of  each  of 
these  pairs,  —  the  credit-value,  and  the  cash- 

124 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

value,  —  as  well  as  the  bank-note  and  its 
equivalent  in  gold,  —  are  brought  into  a  cer- 
tain synthesis  by  the  existence  of  a  process 
of  promising,  and  of  redeeming  the  promise. 
A  promise,  however,  involves  a  species  of 
activity.  In  case  of  the  bank-note,  this 
activity  may  express  whatever  makes  some 
vast  commercial  system  solvent,  or  may  be 
based  upon  the  whole  power  of  a  great  modern 
state. 

In  very  much  the  same  way,  many  philoso- 
phers of  otherwise  widely  different  opinions  rec- 
ognize that  conception  and  perception  are,  in 
live  cognitive  processes,  brought  into  synthesis 
by  some  sort  of  activity,  —  the  activity  of  the 
mind  whose  cognitions  are  in  question.  This 
activity  may  be  one  of  attention.  Or  it  may 
consist  of  a  series  of  voluntary  deeds. 

But  in  each  of  these  cases,  the  members  of 
a  pair,  "bank-note  and  cash,"  or  "concep- 
tion and  perception,"  are  first  antithetically 
opposed  to  each  other;  and  then  a  third  or 
active  element,  a  promise,  a  volition,  or  what 
you  will,  is  mentioned  as  that  which  brings 

125 


'•  I 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  members  of  the  pair  into  synthesis.  But 
this  third  or  synthetic  factor  is  not  thus  co- 
ordinated with  the  two  opposed  members  of 

the  pair. 

If  action,  or  activity,  is  the  name  given  to 
whatever  brings  perceptions  and  conceptions 
into  synthesis,  then  this  third  factor   is   not 
hereby  set  side  by  side,  both  with  perception 
and  with  conception  as  a  third  form  of  cog- 
nitive activity.     For  action  may  be  viewed 
as  a  non-cognitive  function,  —  and  classified 
as  **  conation."     Or,  on  the  contrary,  action 
may   be   viewed  as  that   grade   of   cognition 
which,   being   neither   conception   alone,   nor 
perception   alone,   but   the   synthesis   of   the 
two,    is    the    only    mature    and    successfully 
completed  cognitive  process.     Both  of  these 
views  have  been  asserted.     We  need  not  dis- 
cuss them  here.     But,  in  any  case,  *^ action" 
or  '* activity"  is  not  itself  hereby  defined  as  a 
third  type  of  cognition ;  any  more  than  the 
activity   of  promising  to  pay,   in  Bergson's 
illustration,  is  defined  as  a  third  sort  of  cur- 
rency which  is  neither  gold  nor  bank-notes. 

126 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

Thus  far,  then,  the  classification  of  the  cog- 
nitive processes  as  being  either  perceptions  or 
else  conceptions  remains  triumphant,  and  is 
not  superseded  by  regarding  genuine  knowl- 
edge as  a  synthesis  of  these  two.  For  the 
dual  contrast  between  perception  and  con- 
ception  dominates   all   such   opinions. 

VII 

Yet  cognition  may  be  considered  from  a 
slightly  different  point  of  view. 

It  is  natural  to  classify  cognitive  processes 
by  their  characteristic  objects.     The  object 
of  a  perception  is  a  datum  of  some  sort,  a 
thing,  or  perhaps,  as  Bergson  insists,  a  change, 
or  whatever  else  we  may  be  able  immediately 
to  apprehend.     The  object  of  a  conception  is 
an  universal  of  some  sort,  a  general  or  ab- 
stract character,  a  type,  a  quality,  or  some  com- 
plex object  based  upon  such  universals.     Now 
do  all  objects  of  cognition  belong  to  one  of 
these  two  classes  ?     If  so,  in  which  of  these 
classes  will  you  place  your  neighbor's  mind, 
or  any  of  the  conscious  acts  of  that  mind? 

127 


k 


\ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

Is  your  neighbor's  mind  a  datum  that  you 
could,    were    your    perception    "unlimited," 
simply  find  present  to  you,  as  red  or  as  a 
"  change  "  can  be  present  ?     Is  your  neighbor's 
mind,    on    the   contrary,    an    abstraction,    a 
mere  sort  of  being,  an  universal  which  you 
merely  conceive  ?    If  a  conception  resembles 
a  bank-note  in  being  a  promise  to  pay,  which 
needs  to  be  redeemed  in  the  gold  of  percep- 
tions—then what  immediate  perception  of 
your  own  could  ever  render  to  you  the  "cash- 
value"  of  your  idea  of  your  neighbor's  mind  ? 
On  the  other  hand,  your  present  and  personal 
idea  of  your  neighbor's  mind  is  certainly  not 
itself    such    a   perceptual    "cash-value"    for 
you.     Your  neighbor's  mind  is  no  mere  datum 
to  your  sense  at  any  time. 

If,  then,  there  be  any  cognitive  process 
whose  proper  object  is  your  neighbor's  mind, 
this  process  is  neither  a  mere  conception  nor 
yet  a  mere  perception.  Is  it,  then,  some 
synthesis  or  combination  of  perceptions  and 
conceptions?  Or  is  it,  finally,  some  third 
form  of  cognitive  process,  which  is  neither 

128 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 
perception  nor  conception,  and  which  cannot 
be  completely  describable  in  terms  of  combined 
perceptions  and  conceptions  ?   Now  it  appears 
that  the  word  "interpretation"  is  a  conven- 
ient name  for  a  process  which  at  least  aims 
to  be  cognitive.     And  the  proper  object  of 
an  interpretation,  as  we  usually  employ  the 
name,  is  either  something  of  the  nature  of  a 
mind,  or  else  is  a  process  which  goes  on  in  a 
mind,  or,  finally,  is  a  sign  or  expression  where- 
by some  mind  manifests  its  existence  and  its 
processes.     Let  us  consider,  then,  more  closely,^ 
whether  the  process  of  interpretation,  in  so 
far  as  its  proper  object  is  a  mind,  or  is  the 
sign  of  a  mind,  can  be  reduced  to  a  pure  per- 
ception, or  to  pure  conception,  or  to  any  syn- 
thesis which  merely  involves  these  two. 

VIII 

We  shall  here  be  aided  by  a  very  familiar 
instance,  suggested  by  the  very  illustration 
which  Bergson  uses  in  pointing  out  the  con- 
trast between  perception  and  conception,  and 
in  emphasizing  the  secondary  and  purely  in- 


I 


<    ! 


f 


li 


VOL.  II K 


129 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

strumental  character   of  the  process  of  con- 
ception.    Gold  coin,  as  Bergson  reminds  us, 
corresponds,  in  its  value  for  the  ordinary  busi- 
ness of  buying  and  selling,  to  perceptions  as 
they  appear  in  our  experience.     Bank-notes 
correspond,  in  an  analogous  fashion,  to  con- 
ceptions.    The    notes    are    promises    to    pay 
cash.     The  conceptions  are  useful  guides  to 
possible   perceptions.     The  link  between  the 
note  and  its  cash-value  is  the  Unk  which  the 
activity  of  making  and  keeping  the  promises 
of  a  solvent  bank  provides.     The  Unk  between 
the    conception    and    its    corresponding    per- 
ception is  the  link  which  some  active  syn- 
thesis, such  as  voluntary  seeking,  or  creative 
action,    or    habitual    conduct,    or    intention, 
supplies.     The    illustration    is    clear.     In    a 
special  way  perceptions  do  indeed  correspond 
to    cash-values,    and    conceptions    to    credit- 
values.     But  in  the  world  of  commercial  trans- 
actions there   are   other  values  than   simple 
cash-values  and  credit-values.    Perhaps,  there- 
fore, in  the  realm  of  cognitive  processes  there 
may  be  analogous  varieties. 

130 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

Recall  the  familiar  case  wherein  a  traveller 
crosses   the   boundary  of  a   foreign   country. 
To  the  boundary  he  comes  provided,  let  us 
say,   with  the  gold  and  with  bank-notes  of 
his  own  country,  but  without  any  letter  of 
credit.     This  side  of  the  boundary  his  bank- 
notes are  good  because  of  their  credit-value. 
His  gold  is  good  because,  being  the  coinage 
of  the  realm,  it  possesses  cash-value  and  is 
legal  tender.     But  beyond  the  boundary,  in 
the  land  to  which  he  goes,  the  coin  which  he 
carries  is  no  longer  legal  tender,  and  possibly 
will  not  pass  at  all  in  ordinary  transactions. 
His    bank-notes    may    be,    for    the    moment, 
valueless,  not  because  the  promise  stamped 
upon  their  face  is  irredeemable,  but  because 
the  gold  coin  itself  into  which  they  could  be 
converted  upon  presentation  at  the  bank  in 
question,  would  not  be  legal  tender  beyond 
the  boundary. 

Consequently,  at  the  boundary,  a  new  pro- 
cess may  be  convenient,  if  not,  for  the  travel- 
ler's  purpose,  indispensable.  It  is  the  pro- 
cess of  exchanging  coin  of  the  realm  which 

131 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

he  leaves  for  that  of  the  foreign  land  which  he 
enters.     The  process  may  be  easy  or  diffi- 
cult, may  be  governed  by  strict  rules  or  else 
may  be  capricious,  according  to  the  condi- 
tions which  prevail  at  the  boundary.     But  it 
is  a  third  process,  which  consists  neither  in 
the  presentation  of    cash-values  nor  in  the 
offering  or  accepting  of  credit-values.     It  is 
a    process    of    interpreting    the    cash-values 
which  are  recognized  by  the  laws  and  customs 
of  one  realm  in  terms  of  the  cash-values  which 
are  legal  tender  in  another  country.     It  is 
also  a  process  of  proceeding  to  act  upon  the 
basis  of  this  interpretation.     We  are  not  con- 
cerned with  the  principles  which  make  this 
interpretation  possible,  or  which   guide  the 
conduct  either  of  the  traveller  or  of  the  money- 
changer at  the  boundary.     What  interests  us 
here  is  simply  the  fact  that  a  new  type  of 
transaction  is  now  in  question.     It  is  a  pro- 
cess of  money-changing,  -  a  special  form  of 
exchange  of  values,  but  a  form  not  simply 
analogous  to  the  type  of  the  activities  whereby 
conceptions  are  provided    with    their   corre- 

132 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 
sponding  perceptions.     And  this  form  is  not 
reducible  to  that  of  the  simple  contrast  be- 
tween credit-values  and  cash-values. 

IX 

Each  of  us,  in  every  new  eflFort  to  com-   \ 
municate  with  our  fellow-men,  stands,  like  the 
traveller   crossing   the    boundary   of   a   hew 
country,  in  the  presence  of  a  largely  strange 
world  of  perceptions  and  of  conceptions '    Our 
neighbor's    perceptions,    in    their    immediate 
presence,    we    never    quite    certainly    share. 
Our  neighbor's  conceptions,  for  various  reasons 
which   I   need   not   here   enumerate,    are   so 
largely  communicable  that  they  can  often  be 
regarded,  with  a  high  degree  of  probability, 
as  identical,  in  certain  aspects  of  their  mean- 
ing, with  our  own.     But  the  active  syntheses, 
the  practical  processes  of  seeking  and  of  con- 
struction, the  volitions,  the  promises,  whereby 
we  pass  from  our  own  concepts  to  our  own 
percepts,  are  often  in  a  high  degree  individ- 
ual.    In  that  case  it  may  be  very  difficult 
to  compare  them  to  the  corresponding  pro- 

133 


I 


#1 


if 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

cesses  of  our  neighbors ;  and  then  a  mutual 
understanding,  in  respect  of  our  activities  and 
their  values,  is  frequently  as  hard  to  obtain 
as  is  a  direct  view  of  one  another's  sensory 
perceptions.  ''I  never  loved  you,"  so  says 
Hamlet  to  Ophelia.  "  My  lord,  you  made  me 
believe  so."  Here  is  a  classic  instance  of  a 
problem  of  mutual  interpretation.  Who  of 
us  can  solve  this  problem  for  Hamlet  and 

Ophelia  ? 

Therefore,  in  our  efforts  to  view  the  world 
as   other   men   view   it,   our   undertaking   is 
very   generally   analogous   to   the   traveller's 
financial    transactions    when    he    crosses    the 
boundary.     We  try  to  solve  the  problem  of 
learning  how  to  exchange  the  values  of  our 
own  lives  into  the  terms  which  can  hope  to 
pass  current  in  the  new  or  foreign  spiritual 
realms   whereto,   when   we   take  counsel   to- 
gether, we  are  constantly  attempting  to  pass. 
Both  the  credit-values  and  the  cash-values  are 
not  always  easily  exchanged. 

I  have  no  hope  of  showing,  in  the  present 
discussion,  how  and  how  far  we  can  make  sure 

134 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

that,  in  a  given  case  of  human  social  inter- 
course, we  actually  succeed  in  fairly  exchang- 
ing the  coinage  of  our  perceptions  and  the 
bank-notes  of  our  conceptions  into  the  values 
which  pass  current  in  the  realm  beyond  the 
boundary.     What  measure  of  truth  our  indi- 
vidual interpretations  possess,  and  by  what 
tests  we  verify  that  truth,  I  have  not  now  to 
estimate.     But  I  am  strongly  interested  in  the 
fact  that,  just  as  the  process  of  obtaining  cash 
for  our  bank-notes  is  not  the  same  as  the 
process  of   exchanging  our  coins  for   foreign 
coins  when  we  pass  the  border,  precisely  so 
the  process  of  verifying  our  concepts  through 
obtaining  the  corresponding  percepts  is  not 
the  same  as  the  process  of  interpreting  our 
neighbors'  minds. 

A  philosophy  which,  like  that  of  Bergson, 
defines  the  whole  problem  of  knowledge  in 
terms  of  the  classic  opposition  between  con- 
ception and  perception,  and  which  then  de- 
clares that,  if  our  powers  of  perception  were 
unlimited,  the  goal  of  knowledge  would  be 
reached,  simply  misses  the  principal  problem, 

135 


.) 


i 


r 


m 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

both  of  our  daily  human  existence  and  of  all 
our  higher   spiritual  life,   as   well   as  of  the 
universe.     And  in  bidding  us  seek  the  solu- 
tion of  our  problems  in  terms  of  perception, 
such  a  doctrine  simply  forbids  us  to  pass  any 
of  the  great  boundaries  of  the  spiritual  world, 
or   to   explore  the  many  realms  wherein  the 
wealth    of    the    spirit    is    poured    out.     For 
neither  perception  nor  conception,   nor  any 
combination  of  the  two,  nor  yet  their  synthe- 
sis in  our  practical  activities,  constitutes  the 
whole  of  any  interpretation.     Interpretation, 
however,  is  what  we  seek  in  all  our  social 
and   spiritual   relations;     and   without   some 
process  of  interpretation,  we  obtain   no  ful- 
ness of  life. 

X 

It  would  be  wrong  to  suppose,  however, 
that  interpretation  is  needed  and  is  used  only 
in  our  literal  social  relations  with  other  indi- 
vidual human  beings.  For  it  is  important 
to  notice  that  one  of  the  principal  problems 
\  in  the  life  of  each  of  us  is  the  problem  of 

136 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

interpreting  himself.  The  bare  mention  of 
Hamlet's  words  reminds  us  of  this  fact. 
Ophelia  does  not  understand  Hamlet.  But 
does  he  understand  himself.^ 

In  our  inner  life  it  not  infrequently  happens 
that  we   have  — like   the   traveller,    or   like 
Hamlet  in  the  ghost-scene,  or  like  Macbeth 
when  there  comes  the  knocking  on  the  gate 
—  to  pass  a  boundary,  to  cross  into  some  new 
realm,  not  merely  of  experience,  but  of  desire, 
of  hope,  or  of  resolve.     It  is  then  our  fortune 
not    merely    that   our   former   ideas,    as   the 
pragmatists  say,  no  longer  *'work,"  and  that 
our  bank-notes  can  no  longer  be  cashed  in 
terms  of  the  familiar  inner  perceptions  which 
we    have    been    accustomed    to    seek.     Our 
situation  is  rather  this:  that  both  our  ideas 
and  our  experiences,  both  our  plans  and  our 
powers  to  realize  plans,  both  our  ideas  with 
their  "leadings"  and  our  intuitions,  are  in/ 
process  of  dramatic  transformation.     At  such 
times  we  need  to  know,  like  Nebuchadnezzar, 
both  our  dream  and  its  interpretation. 
Such    critical    passing   of    a   boundary   in 

137 


\ 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

one's  own  inner  world  is  a  well-known  event 

in  youth,  when  what  Goethe  called :  — 

Neue  Liebe,  neues  Leben, 
Neue  Hoffnung,  neues  Sehnen, 

makes  one  say  to  one's  heart : 

Ich  erkenne  dich  nicht  mehr. 
Yet,  not  only  youth,  but  personal  calamity, 
or  other  *' moving  accident,"  or,  in  a  more 
inspiring  way,  the  call  of  some  new  construe- 
live  task,  or,  in  the  extreme  case,  a  religious 
conversion,  may  at  any  time  force  one  or  an- 
other of  us  to  cross  a  boundary  in  a  fashion 
similar  to  those  just  illustrated. 

At  such  times  we  are  impressed  with  the 
fact  that  there  is  no  royal  road  to  self-knowl- 
edge.    Charles  Peirce,  in  the  earUest  of  the 
essays  to  which  I  am  calling  your  attention, 
maintained  (quite  rightly,  I  think)  that  there 
is  no  direct  intuition  or  perception  of  the  self. 
Reflection,  as  Peirce  there  pointed  out,  in- 
volves what  is,  in  its  essence,  an  interior  con- 
versation, in  which  one  discovers  one's  own 
mind  through  a  process  of  inference  analo- 
gous to  the  very  modes  of  inference  which 

138 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

guide  us  in  a  social  effort  to  interpret  our 
neighbors'  minds.  Such  social  inference  is 
surely  no  merely  conceptual  process.  But  it 
cannot  be  reduced  to  the  sort  of  perception 
which  Bergson  invited  you,  in  his  Oxford 
lectures,  to  share.  Although  you  are  indeed 
placed  in  the  "interior"  of  yourself,  you  can 
never  so  far  retire  into  your  own  inmost  re- 
cesses of  intuition  as  merely  to  find  the  true 
self  presented  to  an  inner  sense. 

XI 

So  far  I  have  merely  sketched,  with  my  own 

illustrations,  a  few  notable  features  of  Peirce's 

early  opinions  about  interpretation.     We  are 

now  ready  for  his  central  thesis,  which,  with 

many  variations  in  detail,  he  has  retained  in 

all   his  later   discussions  of   the  processes  in 

question.     I  beg  you  not  to  be  discouraged  by 

the  fact  that,  since  Peirce  has  always  been, 

first  of  all,  a  logician,  he  states  this  central 

thesis  in  a  decidedly  formal  fashion,  which  I 

here  somewhat  freely  imitate.     We  shall  soon 

see  the  usefulness  of  this  formal  procedure. 

139 


i  \ 


I 


f  f 


i, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
Interpretation   always  involves   a  relation 
of  three  terms.     In  the  technical  phrase,  in- 
terpretation is  a  triadic  relation.     That  is, 
you  cannot  express  any  complete  process  of 
interpreting  by  merely  naming  two  terms,  — 
persons,  or  other  objects,  -  and  by  then  tell- 
ing what  dyadic  relation  exists  between  one 
of  these  two  and  the  other. 

Let  me  illustrate :  Suppose  that  an  Egyp- 
tologist translates  an  inscription.     So  far  two 
beings    are    indeed   in    question:  the    trans- 
lator and  his  text.     But  a  genuine  transla- 
tion cannot  be  merely  a  translation  in  the 
abstract.     There  must  be  some  language  into 
which  the  inscription  is  translated.     Let  this 
translation  be,  in  a  given  instance,  an  Eng- 
lish translation.     Then  the  translator  inter- 
prets something ;  but  he  interprets  it  only  to 
one  who  can  read  English.     And  if  a  reader 
knows  no  English,  the  translation  is  for  such 
a  reader  no  interpretation  at  all.     That  is,  a 
triad  of  beings  -  the  Egyptian  text,  the  Egyp- 
tologist   who    translates,    and    the    possible 
EngUsh  reader  —  are  equally  necessary  in  or- 

140 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 
der  that  such  an  English  interpretation  of  an 
Egj'ptian    writing    should    exist.     Whenever 
anybody  translates  a  text,  the  situation  re- 
mains, however  you  vary  texts  or  languages 
or  translators,  essentially  the  same.     There 
must  exist  some  one,  or  some  class  of  beings 
to   whose    use    this    translation    is    adapted;' 
while   the   translator   is   somebody   who   ex- 
presses  himself   by   mediating   between   two 
expressions  of  meanings,  or  between  two  lan- 
guages,   or    between    two    speakers    or    two 
writers.     The  mediator  or  translator,  or  in- 
terpreter, must,  in  cases  of  this  sort,  himself 
know  both  languages,  and  thus  be  intelligible 
to   both   the  persons   whom   his   translation 
serves.     The  triadic  relation  in  question  is, 
m  Its   essence,    non-symmetrical,  -  that    is 
unevenly  arranged  with  respect  to  all  three' 
terms.     Thus   somebody    (Jet    us   sav  A)  - 
the    translator    or     interpreter  -  interprets 
somebody   (let  us  say  B)   to  somebody  (let 
us  say  C).     If  you  transpose  the  order  of  the 
terms,  -  A.  B,  C,  -  an  account  of  the  hap- 
pemng   which    constitutes   an   interpretation 

141 


ij 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

must  be  altered,  or  otherwise  may  become 
either  false  or  meaningless. 
^      Thus  an  interpretation  is  a  relation  which 
not  only   iixvolves   three    terms,   but  bnngs 
them  into  a  determinate  order.     One  of  the 
three    terms    is    the    interpreter;     a    second 
term  is  the  object  -  the  person  or  the  mean- 
ing or  the  text  -  which  is   interpreted ;    the 
third  is  the  person  to  whom  the  interpretation 

is  addressed. 

This  may,  at  first,  seem  to  be  a  mere  for- 
mality. But  nothing  in  the  world  is  more 
momentous  than  the  difference  between  a 
pair  and  a  triad  of  terms  may  become,  if  the 
terms  and  the  relations  involved  are  them- 
selves sufficiently  full  of  meanmg. 

You  may  observe  that,  when  a  man  per- 
ceives a  thing,  the  relation  is  dyadic  A 
perceives  B.  A  pair  of  members  is  needed, 
Ld  suffices,  to  make  the  relation  possible. 
But  when  A  interprets  B  to  C,  a  triad  of  mem- 

/    u      ^*    a«  in  case  of  other  relations, 
bars  (whereof,  as  m  case  oi 

two  or  all  three  members  may  be  whoUv, 
or  in  part,  identical)  must  exist  in  order  to 

142 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

make  the  interpretation  possible.  Let  illus- 
trations show  us  how  important  this  formal 
condition  of  interpretation  may  become. 

When  a  process  of  conscious  reflection  goes "" 
on,  a  man  may  be  said  to  interpret  himself 
to  himself.     In  this  case,  although  but  one 
personality,  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  term,  is 
in  question,  the  relation  is  still  really  a  triadic 
relation.     And,  in  general,  in  such  a  case,  the 
man  who  is  said  to  be  reflecting  remembers 
some  former  promise  or  resolve  of  his  own,  or 
perhaps  reads  an  old  letter  that  he  once  wrote, 
or  an  entry  in  a  diary.     He  then,  at  some 
present  time,  interprets  this  expression  of  his 
past  self. 

JBut,  usually,  he  interprets  this  bit  of  his 
past  self  to  his  future  self.  "This,"  he  says, 
"is  what  I  meant  when  I  made  that  promise." 
"This  is  what  I  wrote  or  recorded  or  prom- 
ised." "Therefore,"  he  continues,  address- 
ing his  future  self,  "I  am  now  committed  to 
doing  thus,"  "planning  thus,"  and  so  on. 

The   interpretation   in   question   still   con- 
stitutes,  therefore,   a   triadic   relation.     And 

143 


M 


I 


1 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

there  are  three  men  present  in  and  taking 
part  in  the  interior  conversation :  the  man  of 
the  past  whose  promises,  notes,  records,  old 
letters,    are    interpreted;     the    present    self 
who   interprets   them;     and   the   future   self 
to    whom    the    interpretation    is    addressed. 
Through  the  present  self  the  past  is  so  in- 
terpreted that  its  counsel  is  conveyed  to  the 
future  self. 

XII 

The  illustration  just  chosen  has  been  taken 
from  the  supposed  experience  of  an  individual 
man.  But  the  relations  involved  are  capable 
of  a  far-reaching  metaphysical  generaUzation. 
For  this  generaUzation  I  cannot  cite  the 
authority  of  Peirce.  I  must  deal  with  just 
this  aspect  of  the  matter  in  my  own  way. 

The  relations  exemplified  by  the  man  who, 
at  a  given  present  moment,  interprets  his 
own  past  to  his  own  future,  are  precisely 
analogous  to  the  relations  which  exist  when 
any  past  state  of  the  world  is,  at  any  present 
moment,   so  linked,  through  a  definite  his- 

144 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

torical  process,  with  the  coming  state  of  the 
world,  that  an  intelligent  observer  who  hap- 
pened to  be  in  possession  of  the  facts  could, 
were  he  present,  interpret  to  a  possible  future 
observer  the  meaning  of  the  past.  Such 
interpretation  might  or  might  not  involve 
definite  predictions  of  future  events.  His- 
tory or  biography,  physical  or  mental  pro- 
cesses, might  be  in  question  ;  fate  or  free  will, 
determinism  or  chance,  might  rule  the  region 
of  the  world  which  was  under  consideration. 
The  most  general  distinctions  of  past,  present, 
and  future  appear  in  a  new  light  when  con- 
sidered with  reference  to  the  process  of  in- 
terpretation. 

In  fact,  what  our  own  inner  reflection 
exemplifies  is  outwardly  embodied  in  the 
whole  world's  history.  For  what  we  all  mean 
by  past  time  is  a  realm  of  events  whose  his- 
torical sense,  whose  records,  whose  lessons,  we 
may  now  interpret,  in  so  far  as  our  memory 
and  the  documents  furnish  us  the  evidences 
for  such  interpretation.  We  may  also  ob- 
serve that  what  we  mean  by  future  time  is  a 

VOL.  II  —  L  145 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

realm  of  events  which  we  view  as  more  or  less 
under  the  control  of  the  present  will  of  volun- 
tary agents,  so  that  it  is  worth  while  to  give 
to  ourselves,  or  to  our  fellows,  counsel  re- 
garding this  future.     And  so,  wherever  the 
world's  processes  are  recorded,  wherever  the 
records  are  preserved,  and  wherever  they  in- 
fluence in  any  way  the  future  course  of  events, 
we  may  say  that  (at  least  in  these  parts  of 
the  world)  the  present  potentially  interprets 
the  past  to  the  future,  and  continues  so  to  do 

,  ad  infinitum. 

Such,  for  instance,  is  the  case  when  one 
studies  the  crust  of  a  planet.  The  erosions 
and  the  deposits  of  a  present  geological  period 
lay  down  the  traces  which,  if  read  by  a  geolo- 
gist, would  interpret  the  past  history  of  the 
planet's  crust  to  the  observers  of  future  geo- 

logical  periods. 

Thus  the  Colorado  Canon,  in  its  present 
condition,  is  a  geological  section  produced  by 
a  recent  stream.  Its  walls  record,  in  their 
stratification,  a  vast  series  of  long-past 
changes.     The  geologist  of  the  present  may 

146 


} 


NATURE  OF   INTERPRETATION' 

read  these  traces,  and  may  interpret  them  for 
future  geologists   of  our  own   age.     But   the 
present  state  of  the  Colorado   Canon,  which 
will  ere  long  pass  away  as  the  walls  crumble, 
and  as  the  continents  rise  or  sink,  will  leave 
traces  that  may  be  used  at  some  future  time 
to  interpret  these  now  present  conditions  of 
the  earth's  crust  to  some  still  more  advanced 
future,   which    will   come   to   exist   after  yet 
other  geological  periods  have  passed  away. 

In  sum,  if  we  view  the  world  as  everywhere"" 
and  always  recording  its  own  history,  by  pro- 
cesses of  aging  and  weathering,  or  of  evolu- 
tion, or  of  stellar  and  nebular  clusterings  and 
streamings,   we  can   simply   define  the  time 
order,  and  its  three  regions,  —  past,  present, 
future,  —  as  an  order  of  possible  interpreta- 
tion.    That  is,  we  can  define  the  present  as, 
potentially,  the  interpretation  of  the  past  to 
the  future.     The  triadic  structure  of  our  in- 
terpretations is  strictly  analogous,  both  to  the 
psychological  and  to  the  metaphysical  struc- 
ture of  the  world  of  time.     And  each  of  these 
structures  can  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  other. 

147 


•  iW 


I! 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

This  analogy  between  the  relational  struc- 
ture of  the  whole  time-process  and  the  rela- 
tions which  are  characteristic  of  any  system 
of  acts  of  interpretation  seems  to  me  to  be 
worthy  of  careful  consideration. 

XIII 

The  observation  of  Peirce  that  interpreta- 
tion is  a  process  involving,  from  its  very  es- 
sence,  a  triadic  relation,  is  thus,  in  any  case, 
no  mere  logical  formalism. 
-     Psychologically  speaking,  the  mental  pro- 
cess which  thus  involves  three  -mbers  de- 
fers from  perception  and  conception  m  three 
.espects.     First,  inten>retation  is  a  convoca- 
tion, and  not  a  lonely  enterprise     There 
some  one,  in  the  realm  of  Psycbolog.cal  ^ap 
penings,  who  addresses  some  one.    The  one 
tho  addresses  interprets  some  object  to  the 
one    addressed.     In    the    second    place,    the 
•Irpreted  object  is  itself  something  which 

has  the  nature  of  a  mental  expression.   P  ir^ 
uses  the  term  "sign"  to  name  this  mentab 

iect  which  is  interpreted.    Thirdly,  since  the 

148 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 
interpretation  is  a  mental  act,  and  is  an  act 
which  is  expressed,  the  interpretation  itself 
is,  in  its  turn,  a  Sign.     This  new  sign  calls  for 
further   interpretation.     For   the   interpreta- 
tion is  addressed  to  somebody.     And  so,  —  at 
least  in  ideal,  —  the  social  process  involved 
is  endless.     Thus  wealthy,  then,  in  its  psy- 
chological consequences,  is  the  formal  char- 
acter of  a  situation  wherein  any  interpreta- 
tion takes  place. 

Perception  has  its  natural  terminus  in  some 
object  perceived ;   and  therewith  the  process, 
as  would  seem,  might  end,  were  there  nothing 
else  in  the  world  to  perceive.     Conception  is 
contented,    so    to    speak,    with    defining    the 
universal  type,  or  ideal  form  which  chances 
to  become  an  object  of  somebody's  thought. 
In  order  to  define  a  new  universal,  one  needs 
a  new  act  of  thought  whose  occurrence  seems, 
in  so  far,  an  arbitrary  additional  cognitive 
function.     Thus    both    perception    and    con- 
ception  are,   so  to  speak,   self-limiting  pro- 
cesses.    The  wealth  of  their  facts  comes  to 
them  from  without,  arbitrarily. 

149 


w 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

But  interpretation  both  requires  as  its 
basis  the  sign  or  mental  expression  which  is 
\:i  interpreted,  and  calls  for  a  further  in- 

erpretation  of  its  own  act    iust  because 
addresses  itself  to  some  third  bein  ^    Thu 

interpretation  is  not  only  an  essentially  social 

pie's,  but  also  a  process  which,  when  one 
initiated,  can  be  terminated  only  by  an  ex 

ternal   and    arbitrary    interruption     such    a 

death  or    social  separation.     By  it  ^  ,  the 
p,,eess  of   interpretation   calls,  in  >deal,  ^o 

an  infinite  sequence  of  -^-P-^^^"^   ,^ 
every    interpretation,    being     addressed    to 
sllbody,  demands  interpretation  from  the 
one  to  whom  it  is  addressed. 
'        Thus  the  formal  difference  between  inter- 
pretation on  the  one  hand,  and  percepUon 
Ld  conception  on  the  other  hand  is  a  ^ff- 
ence    involving    endlessly    wealthy    possible 
psychological    consequences. 

Perception    is    indeed    supported    by    the 
wealth    of    our    sensory    processes;     and 
therefore  rightly  said  to  possess  an  endless 
fecundity. 

150 


\ 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

But  interpretation  lives  in  a  world  which 
is  endlessly  richer  than  the  realm  of  percep- 
tion.    For  its  discoveries  are  constantly  re- 
newed by  the  inexhaustible  resources  of  our 
social   relations,    while   its   ideals   essentially 
demand,  at  every  point,  an  infinite  series  of 
mutual   interpretations   in   order   to   express 
what    even    the    very    least    conversational 
effort,  the  least  attempt  to  find  our  way  in 
the  life  that  we  would  interpret,  involves. 

Conception    is    often    denounced,    in    our 
day,  as  "sterile."     But  perception,  taken  by 
itself,    is    intolerably    lonesome.     And    every 
philosophy  whose  sole  principle  is  perception 
invites  us  to  dwell  in  a  desolate  wilderness 
where  neither  God  nor  man  exists.     For  where 
either  God  or  man  is  in  question,  interpreta- 
tion is  demanded.     And  interpretation, —even 
the  simplest,  even  the  most  halting  and  trivial 
interpretation  of  our  daily  life,  -  seeks  what 
eye  hath  not  seen,  and  ear  hath  not  heard, 
and  what  it  hath  not  entered  into  the  heart 
of  man  to  conceive,  —  namely,  the  successful 
interpretation  of  somebody  to  somebody. 

151 


\ 


) 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

Interpretation  seeks  an  object  which  is 
essentially  spiritual.  The  abyss  of  abstract 
conception  says  of  this  object :  It  is  not  m 
me  The  heaven  of  glittering  immediacies 
which  perception  furnishes  answers  the  quest 
by  saying :  It  is  not  in  me.  interpretation 
says :  It  is  nigh  thee,- even  m  thine  heart, 

but  shows  us,  through  manifesting  the  very 
nature  of  the  object  to  be  sought,  what 
general  conditions  must  be  met  if  ariy  one  is 
;  interpret  a  genuine  Sign  to  an  understand- 
ing mind.  And  withal,  interpretation  seeks 
a  city  out  of  sight,  the  homeland  where,  per- 
chance, we  learn  to  understand  one  another. 

XIV 
^Our  first  glimpse  of  Charles  Peirce's  neg- 
lected  doctrine  of  the  logic  of  signs  and  of 
interpretations  necessarily  gives  us  extremely 
inadequate  impressions.     But  in  pomting  out 
the  parallelism  between  the  relational  char- 
acters of  the  time-process  and  those  of  the 
process  of  interpretation,  I  have  already  shown 
that  the  questions  at  issue  are  neither  merely 

152 


\ 


II 

/i 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

intellectual,  nor  purely  conceptual,  and  con- 
cern many  matters  which  are  confined  neither 
to  logic  nor  to  descriptive  psychology.  As  a 
fact,  to  conceive  the  cognitive  process  in 
terms  of  such  a  threefold  division,  and  also 
in  terms  of  such  a  triadic  relation,  as  the 
division  and  the  relation  which  Peirce  brings 
to  our  attention,  —  to  view  cognition  thus 
throws  Ught,  I  believe,  upon  all  the  principal 
issues  which  are  now  before  us. 

Recent  pragmatism,  both  in  the  form  em- 
phasized by  James  and  (so  far  as  I  know)  in 
all  its  other  now  prominent  forms,  depends 
upon  conceiving  two  types  of  cognitive  pro- 
cesses, perception  and  conception,  as  mutually 
opposed,  and  as  in  such  wise  opposed  that  con- 
ception merely  defines  the  bank-notes,  while 
only  perception  can  supply  the  needed  cash. 
In  consequence  of  this  duahstic  view  of  the 
cognitive  process,  and  in  view  of  other  con- 
siderations recently  emphasized,  the  essential 
doctrine  of  pragmatism  has  come  to  include 
the  two  well-known  theses:    That  truth  is 
mutable;    and  that  the  sole  criterion  of  the 

158 


'f* 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

present  state  of  the  truth  is  to  be  found  in  the 
contents   of   particular   perceptions. 

Corresponding  to  this  form  of  epistemology 
we  have,  in  the  metaphysic  of  Bergson,  a 
doctrine  of  reahty  based  upon  the  same  dual 
classification  of  the  cognitive  processes,  and 
upon  the  same  preference  for  perception  as 
against  its  supposed  sole  rival. 

But  if  we  review  the  facts  in  the  new  light 
which  Peirce's  views  about  interpretation 
enable  us,  I  think,  to  use,  we  shall  reach  re- 
sults, that,  as  I  close,  I  may  yet  barely  hint. 

XV 

Reality,  so  Bergson  tells  us, —  Reality, 
which  must  be  perceived  just  as  artists  per- 
ceive its  passing  data,  and  thereby  teach  us 
to  perceive  what  we  never  saw  before,— 
Reality  is  essentially  change,  flow,  movement. 
In  perceptual  time,  if  you  abstract  from  the 
material  Hmitations  which  the  present  bond- 
age of  our  intellect  forces  upon  us,  both 
present  and  past  interpenetrate,  and  all 
is    one  ever  present  duration,  consisting  of 

154 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 
encHe.   qualitative,,  various   but  coalescing 

But  a  recognition  of  the  existence,  and  a 
due   understanding  of  the  character  of  the 
process    of   interpretation,    will    show    us     I 
beheve,  that  the  tin,e-order,  in  its  sense  Jnd 
mterconnection,    is    known    to    us    through 
mterpretafon,   and   is   neither  a   conceptual 
nor  vet  a  perceptual  order.     We  learn  about 
through  what  is,  in  a  sense,  the  conversa- 
tion winch  the  present,  in   the  name  of   the 
remembered  or  presupposed  past,  addresses 
to    the   expected    future,    whenever    we    are 

interested    in    dirertino.   ^ 

m    directmg   our   own    course   of 

voluntary  action,  or  in   taking  counsel   with 
one  another.     Life  may  be  a  colloquy,  or  a 

prayer;    but  the  life  of  a  reasonable  being  il 

never  a  mere  perception;  nor  a  conception; 
nor  a  mere  sequence  of  thoughtless  deeds  • 
nor  yet  an  active  process,  however  synthetic' 
wherem  interpretation  plays  no  part.  ^: 
;s  essentially,  i„  ,,,  i^eal,  social.  HencI 
nterpretation  is  a  necessary  element  of  eve  J 
timg  that,  in  life,  has  ideal  value. 

155 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

But  when  the  time-process  is  viewed  as  an 
interpretation  of  the  past  to  the  future  by 
means  of  our  present  acts  of  choice,  then  the 
divisions  and  the  successions  which  are  found 
in  the  temporal  order  are  not,  as  Bergson 
supposes,  due  to  a  false  translation  of  the 
perceived  temporal  flow  into  a  spatial  order. 
For  every  present  deed  interprets  my  future ; 
and  therefore  divides  my  life  into  the  region 
of  what  I  have  already  done,  and  the  region 
of   what   I   have   yet   to   accompUsh.     This 
division  is  due,  not  to  the  geometrical  degen- 
eration which  Bergson  refers  to  our  intellect, 
but  to  one  of  the  most  significant  features 
of  the  spiritual  world,  —  namely,  to  the  fact 
that  we  interpret  all  past  time  as  irrevocable. 
So  to  interpret  our  past  is  the  very  founda- 
tion of  all  deUberate  choice.     But  the  irrev- 
ocable   past    changes    no    more.     And    the 
stupendous  spiritual  significance  which  this 
interpretation   introduces   into   our   view   of 
our  lives,  of  history,  of  nature,  and  of  God, 
we  have  already  had  occasion  to  consider  in 
the  first  part  of  this  course.    The  philosophy 

150 


I 


NATURE  OP  INTERPRETATION 

of  change,  the  perception  of  an  universe  where 
a    as  fluent,  can  be  interpreted  only  through 

the  deed  once  done  is  never  to  be  recalled  • 

that  what  has  been  done  is  at  once  the  woS; 
safest  treasure,  and  its  heaviest  burden. 

Whoever   insists    upon    the   mutability   of 

n:th    speaks  in  terms  of  the  dua,  elassLa- 
t.on  of  cogmt,ve  processes.     But  let  one  learn 
to  know  that  our  very  conception  of  our  tern 
Poral    experience,    as    of   all    happenings,    i. 
-ther  a  conception  nor  a  perception    bu 
an  mte^retation.     Let  one  note  that  ;very 
present   judgment   bearing   upon    future   el 

Penence  .  indeed,  as  the  pragmatists  tell  us. 
a  praCcal   activity.     But   let  one  also  see 
tJiat,  for  this  very  reason,  every  judgment 
w  ose  meaning  is  concrete  and  'prL  LTso 

future   deed.     Let   one   consider   that    when 

^y  present  judement    ^Ar^       • 

self     .  /"'^^^^^t'  addressing  my  future 

seit,    counsels:  "Do    fhi*«  "    ^w 

t  11  ^^^'      t^is    counsel    if 

h^ceforth  ,„ev<«:.l,ly  stands  „„   ^e  «„re 

157 


(I 


* 


I 

I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
Of  my  lite,  and  can  never  be  removed  there- 

^^  Hence,  just  as  what  is  done  cannot  be  un^ 
done,  iust  so  what  is  truly  or  falsely  counsell^ 

b,  any  concrete  and  practical  judgment    e 
mains   permanently  true    or    false.     For  the 
deed  which  a  judgment  counsels  remams  for- 
ever done,  when  once  it  has  been  done. 

XVI 

r     Let  me  summarize  the  main  results  of  this 

'Tin  Addition  to  the  world  of  conception 
and  to  the  world  of  perception,  we  have  to 
t^ke  account  of  a  worid  of  interpretation. 

'  The  features  that  distinguish  from  one 
another  the  three  Presses  -  percept-, 
conception,  and  interpretation  -  have  to  do 
S  their  logical  and  formal  charactenstics, 
.ith  their  psychological  -tives  an  accom^ 
paniments,  and  with    the    objects   to  which 

thev   are  directed. 

3'  Logic*  and  formally  c«s*r«i,  - 
terpreWion  diSers  from  perception  and  trom 

158 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

conception  by  the  fact  that  it  involves  re- 
lations which  are  essentially  triadic. 

4.  Psychologically,  interpretation  differs 
from  perception  and  from  conception  by  the 
fact  that  it  is,  in  its  intent,  an  essentially 
social  process.  It  accompanies  every  intel- 
ligent conversation.  It  is  used  whenever  we 
acknowledge  the  being  and  the  inner  life  of 
our  fellow-men.  It  transforms  our  own  inner 
hfe  into  a  conscious  interior  conversation, 
wherein  we  interpret  ourselves.  Both  of  our- 
selves and  of  our  neighbors  we  have  no  merely 
intuitive  knowledge,  no  complete  perception, 
and  no  adequate  conception.  Reflection  is 
an  effort  at  self-interpretation. 

5.  Both  logically  and  psychologically,  in- 
terpretation differs  from  perception  and  from 
conception  in  that  each  of  these  latter  pro- 
cesses derives  the  wealth  of  its  facts  from  a 
world  which,  at  least  in  seeming,  is  external 
to  itself.  Were  there  but  one  object  to  per- 
ceive, and  one  universal  to  conceive,  one  act 
of  perception  and  one  of  conception  would 
be,    m    the    abstract,  possible    and  required. 

159 


iV 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

The  need  for  new  acts  of  perception  and  of 
conception  seems  to  be,  in  so  far,  arbitrarily 
determined    by    the    presence    of    new    facts 
which  are  to  be  perceived  or  conceived.     But 
interpretation,    while    always    stimulated    to 
fresh  efforts  by  the  inexhaustible  wealth  of 
the  novel  facts  of  the  social  world,  demands, 
by  virtue  of  its  own  nature,  and  even  in  the 
simplest  conceivable  case,  an  endless  wealth 
of  new  interpretations.     For  every  interpre- 
tation, as  an  expression   of    mental  activity, 
addresses  itself  to  a  possible  interpreter,  and 
demands  that  it  shall  be,  in  its  turn,  inter- 
preted.    Therefore  it  is  not  the  continuance, 
but  the  interruption,  of  the  process  of  inter- 
pretation which  appears  to  be  arbitrary ;   and 
which  seems  to  be  due  to  sources  and  motives 
foreign  to  the  act  of  interpretation. 

6.    Metaphysically  considered,  the  world  df 
interpretation  is  the  world  in  which,  if  indee4 
we  are  able  to  interpret  at  all,  we  learn  to 
acknowledge  the  being  and  the  inner  Hfe  of  our, 
fellow-men ;  and  to  understand  the  constitu-  ^ 
tion  of  temporal  experience,  with  its  endlessly 

160 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

accumulating  sequence  of  significant  deeds. 
In  this  world  of  interpretation,  of  whose 
most  general  structure  we  have  now  obtained 
a  gHmpse,  selves  and  communities  may  exist, 
past  and  future  can  be  defined,  and  the  realms 
of  the  spirit  may  find  a  place  which  neither 
barren  conception  nor  the  chaotic  flow  of 
interpenetrating  perceptions  could  ever  ren- 
der significant. 

7.   Bergson  has  eloquently  referred  us  to 
the  artists,  as  the  men  whose  office  it  is  to 
teach  us  how  to  perceive.     Let  the  philoso- 
phers, he  tells  us,  learn  from  the  methods  of 
the  artists.     In  reply  we  can  only  insist,  in 
this  place,  that  the  sole  office  of  the  artists 
has  always  been  to  interpret.     They  address 
us,  so  as  to  interpret  to  us  their  own  percep- 
tions, and  thereby  their  own  lives  and  deeds. 
In  turn,  they  call  upon  us  to  renew  the  endless 
life  of  the  community  of  the  spirits  who  in- 
terpret.    The  artists  do  not  do  their  work  for 
"nothing,"  nor  yet  for  "pleasure."     They  do 
their  work  because  they   love  the  unity  of 
spirit  which,  through  their  work,  is  brought 


r 


VOL.  II 


M 


161 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

into  the  life  of  mankind.     The  artists  are  in 
this  respect  not  alone. 

The  prophets,  the  founders  of  religions,  the 
leaders    of    mankind:    they  do    not    merely 
see ;   nor  do  they  merely  think ;    nor  yet  are 
they  mere  pragmatists  hovering  between  ab- 
stract   conceptions    which    they    dislike,    and 
particular  experiences  which  they  indeed  de- 
sire, but  so  view  that  therein  they  find  only 
the    particular.     Those    for    whom    the    sole 
contrast  in  the  world  of   cognitions  is  that 
between  conception  and  perception,  stand   in 
Faust's  position.     Their  conceptions  are  in- 
deed mere  bank-notes.     But  alas  !  their  per- 
ceptions are,  at  best,  mere  cash.     So  in  desire 
\    they  hasten  to  enjoyment,  and  in  enjoyment 
pine  to  feel  desire. 

Such  find  indeed  their  "cash"  of  experience 
in  plenty.  But  they  never  find  what  has 
created  all  the  great  rehgions,  and  all  the 
deathless  loyalties,  and  all  the  genuinely  true 
insights  of  the  human  world,  —  namely,  that 
interpretation  of  life  which  sends  us  across 
the  borders  both  of  our  conceptual  and  of  our 

162 


NATURE  OF  INTERPRETATION 

perceptual  life,  to  lay  up  treasures  in  other 
worlds,  to  interpret  the  meaning  of  the  pro- 
cesses of  time,  to  read  the  meaning  of  art  and 
of  hfe. 

8.  Do  you  ask  what  this  process  is  which 
thus    transcends    both    perception    and    con- 
ception,  I   answer  that  it  is   the  process  in 
which  you  engage  whenever  you  take  counsel 
with  a  friend,  or  look  in  the  eyes  of  one  be- 
loved, or  serve  the  cause  of  your  life.     This 
process  it  is  which  touches  the  heart  of  reality. 
Let  the  philosophers,  then,  endeavor  to  avoid 
"sterile"    conceptions.      Let     them    equally 
avoid  those  wanton  revels  in  mere  perception 
which  are  at  present  the  bane  of  our  art,  of 
our  literature,   of  our   social   ideals,   and   of 
our  religion.     Let  the  philosophers  learn  from 
those  who  teach  us,  as  the  true  artists  do,  the 
art  of  interpretation. 

A  few  fragmentary  indications  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  this  art  we  may  hope,  at  the  next 
time,  to  set  forth  upon  the  bases  which  Charles 
Peirce's  theory  has  suggested. 


163 


\1 


XII 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 


LECTURE  XII 

« 

THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 
Ty^E  have  seen  some  of  the  contrasts 
whereby  the  three  cognitive  processes  : 
Percei^tion,  Conception,  and  Interpretation, 
are  distinguished  from  one  another.^  Our  next 
task  is  to  become  better  acquainted  with  the 
work  and  the  value  of  Interpretation. 


In  this  undertaking  we  shall  be  guided  by 
the  special  problems  to  which  our  lectures  are 
devoted.     The     metaphysical     inquiry    con- 
cerning the  nature  and  the  reality  of  the  com- 
munity is   still  our  leading  topiQ   To   this 
topic  whatever  we  shall  have  to  say  about 
interpretation     is     everywhere     subordinate. 
But,  since,  if  I  am  right,  ^interpretation  is 
indeed  a  fundamental  cognitive  process,-  we 
shall  need  still  further  to  illustrate  its  nature 
a>d    Its    principal    forms.     Every    apparent 
d  gression  from  our  main  path  will  quickly 

167 


j 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

lead  us  back  to  our  central  issues.  '  Inter- 
pretation is,  once  for  all,  the  main  business  of 
philosophy^ 

The  present  lecture  will  include  two  stages 
of  movement  towards  our  goal.  First,  we 
shall  study  the  elementary  psychology  of  the 
process  of  interpretation.  Secondly,  we  shall 
portray  the  ideal  that  guides  a  truth-loving 
interpreter.  The  first  of  these  inquiries  will 
concern  topics  which  are  both  familiar  and 
neglected.  The  second  part  of  our  lecture^ 
will  throw  light  upon  the  ethical  problems 
with  which  our  study  of  the  Christian  ideas 
has  made  us  acquainted.  At  the  close  of  the 
lecture  our  preparation  for  an  outline  of  the 
^metaphysics  of  interpretation :) will  be  com- 
pleted. 

n 

wl  have  called  interpretation  an  essentially 
social  cognitive  process ;  and  such,  in  fact,  it 
is.  [Man  is  an  animal  that  interprets;  and 
therefore  man  lives  in  communities,  and  de- 
pends upon  them  for  insight  and  for  salvation.  ' 

168 


T 


/ 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

But  the  elementary  psychological  forms  in 
which  interpretation  appears  find  a  place  in 
our  lives  whether  or  no  we  are  in  company; 
just  as  a  child  can  sing  when  alone,  although 
singing  is,  on  the  whole,  a  social  activity. 
We  shall  need  to  consider  how  an  interpreter  "^ 
conducts  his  mental  processes,  even  when  he 
is  taking  no  explicit  account  of  other  minds 
than  his  own. 

[in  looking  for  the  psychological  foundations 
of  interpretation,  we  shall  be  directed  by 
Charles  Peirce's  formal  definition  of  the  men-  \ 
tal  functions  which  are  involved.  Wherever 
an  interpretation  takes  place,  however  little 
it  seems  to  be  an  explicitly  social  undertaking, 
j^  triadic  cognitive  process  can  be  observed^' 
Let  us  look,  then,  for  elementary  instances  of 
such  triadic  processes. 

In  the  earliest  of  the  logical  essays  to  which, 
at  the  last  time,  I  referred,  Charles  Peirce 
pointed  out  that  every  instance  of  conscious 
and  explicit  Comparison  involves  an  elemen-"" 
tary  form  of  interpretation.  This  observation 
of  Peirce's  enables  us  to  study  interpretation 

169 

/   > 


V 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


in  some  of  its  simplest  shapes,  relieved  of  the 
complications  which  our  social  efforts  to  com- 
municate with  other  minds  usually  involve. 
Yet,  even  in  this  rudimentary  form,  inter- 
pretation involves  the  motives  which,  upon 
higher  levels,  make  its  work  so  wealthy  in 
results,  and  so  significant  in  its  contrasts  with 
perception  and  conception. 

III 

l7  The  most  familiar  instances  of  the  mental 
process  known  as  Comparison  seem,  at  first 
sight,  to  consist  of  a  consciousness  of  certain 
familiar  dyadic  relations,  —  relations  of  simi- 
larity and  difference.  Red  contrasts  with 
green;  sound  breaks  in  upon  silence;  one 
sensory  quality  collides,  as  it  were,  with  an- 
other. The  "shock  of  difference"  awakens 
our  attention.  In  other  cases,  an  unexpected 
similarity  of  colors  and  tones  attracts  our 
interest.  Or  perhaps  the  odors  of  two  flowers, 
or  the  flavors  of  two  fruits,  resemble  one  the 
other.  Pairs  of  perceived  objects^  are,  in  all 
these   cases,    in    question.     We   express    our 

170 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

observations    in    such    judgments    as:      "A 
resembles  B;"  "D  is  unlike  E." 

Now  Peirce's  view  of  the  nature  of  com- 
parison depends  upon  noticing  that,  familiar 
as  such  ^observations  of   similarity  and   dis- 
similarity may  be,  no  one  of  them  constitutes 
the  whole  of  any  complete  act  of  comparison.^ 
Comparison,  in  the  fuller  sense  of  the  word, 
takes  place   when   one   asks   or  answers  the 
question:     What    constitutes   the    difference 
between  A  and  B?''     ''Wherein  does  A  re- 
semble   B.^"     ''Wherein    consists    their    dis-  <?* 
tinction.^"     Let    me    first    illustrate    such    a 
question  in  a  case  wherein  the  answer  is  easy. 
If  you  write  a  word  with  your  own  hand,  and 
hold  it  up  before  a  mirror,  your  own  hand- 
writing becomes  more  or  less  unintelligible  to 
you,  unless  you  are  already  accustomed  to  read 
or  to  write  mirror-script.     Suppose,  however, 
that  instead  of  writing  words  yourself,  you 
let  some  one  else  show   you   words   already 
written.     And    suppose,    further,    that    two 
words  have  been  written  side  by  side  on  the 
same  sheet  of  paper,  neither  of  them  by  your 

171 


/ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

own  hand.  Suppose  one  of  them  to  have 
been  written  upright,  while  the  other  is  the 
counterpart  of  the  first,  except  that  it  is  the 
first  turned  upside  down,  or  else  is  the  first 
in  mirror-script.  If,  without  knowing  how 
these  words  have  been  produced,  you  look 
at  them,  you  can  directly  observe  that 
the  two  written  words  differ  in  appearance, 
and  that  they  also  have  a  close  resemblance. 
But,  unless  you  were  already  familiar  with 
the  results  of  inverting  a  handwriting  or  of 
observing  it  in  a  mirror,  you  could  not  thus 
directly  observe  wherein  consist  the  similar- 
ities and  the  differences  of  the  two  words 
which  lie  before  you  on  the  paper. 

Since  you  are  actually  familiar  with  mirror- 
script,  and  with  the  results  of  turning  a  sheet 
of  paper  upside  down,  you  will  indeed  no 
doubt  be  able  to  name  the  difference  of  the 
two  supposed  words.  But  inCorder  to  com- 
pare the  two  words  thus  presented  side  by 
side  on  the  same  sheet  of  paper,  and  to  tell 
wherein  they  are  similar  and  wherein  they 
differ,  you  need  what  Peirce  calls   a  medi- 

172 


THE   WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

ating  idea,  or  what  he  also  calls  "a  third," 
which,  as  he  phrases  the  matter,  shall  "rep- 
resent" or  "interpret"  one  of  the  two  written  ^ 
wordf  to,  or  in  terms  of,  the  other.  ^ You  use 
such  a  "third"  idea  when  you  say,  "This  word 
is  the  mirror-script  representative  of  that 
word."     For  now  the  difference  is  interpreted.  ^ 

Thus  a  complete  act  of  comparison  involves 
such  a  "third,"  such  a  "mediating"  image  or 
idea,  — such  an(;^interpreter."     By  means  of  •*• 
this  "third"  you  so  compare  a  "first"  object 
with  a  "second"  as  to  make  clear  to  yourself 
wherein  consists  the  similarity  and  the  differ- 
ence between  the  second  and  the  fir^  [Com-  ^ 
parison  must  be  triadic  in  order  to  bJ"both  ex-  I 
pHcit  and   complete^   Likenesses  and  differ- 
ences  are  the  signs  that  a  comparison  is  needed. 
But  these  signs  are  not  their  own  interpretation.  . ' 

Let  us  observe  another  instance  of  the 
same  general  type.  One  may  be  long  ac- 
quainted with  the  difference  between  his  own 
right  and  left  hands  before  one  learns  to  in- 
terpret this  difference,  and  so  to  complete 
one's  comparison,  in  terms  of  the  third  idea 

173 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

that  the  one  hand  is  a  more  or  less  imperfect 
mirror-image  of  the  other  hand,  the  imper- 
fections  being  dtlUiWlhe  lack  of  symmetry  in 
our  bodily  structure. 

Still  another  familiar  instance  of  comparison 
will  show  how  needful  it  is  to  choose  the  right 
** third"  in  order  to  complete  one's  view  of  the 
matter.  One  may  long  have  observed  that  a 
friend's  face,  when  seen  in  a  mirror,  contrasts 
with  the  same  face  if  seen  apart  from  the 
mirror.  Yet  it  may  be  very  hard  for  a  given 
person  to  tell  why  this  difference  exists,  or 
wherein  it  consists.  I  have  asked  the  ques- 
tion of  various  intelligent  and  observant  peo- 
ple, who  could  only  reply  :  *'It  is  true  that  in 
general  a  man's  face,  as  I  see  it  before  me, 
does  not  perfectly  resemble  that  man's  face 
as  it  appears  when  I  look  at  it  in  a  mirror. 
But  I  cannot  define  the  reason  for  this  differ- 
ence, or  tell  wherein  the  difference  consists." 
The  answer  to  the  question  is  that,  since  the 
features  of  a  human  face  are  usually,  in  their 
finer  details,  more  or  less  unsymmetrically 
disposed  with  reference  to  the  vertical  axis 

174 


THE   WILL   TO  INTERPRET 

of  the  body,  the  mirror  picture,  even  of  a 
fairly  regular  countenance,  must  be  altered  - 
to  suit  these  vertical  asymmetries.  The  idea 
of  the  vertical  asymmetries  is  here  the  needed 
"third"  which  interprets  the  difference  be- 
tween the  man's  face  when  seen  in  the  mirror 
and  when  seen  out  of  the  mirror. 

A  lady  who  had  passed  part  of  her  life  in 
Australia,  and  part  in  England,  once  told  me 
that,  for  years,  she  had   never  been   able  to 
understand  the  difference  which,  to  her  eyes, 
existed  between  the  full  moon  as  seen  in  Eng- 
land and  as  observed  by  her  during  her  years 
in   Australia.     At   last   she   found   the   right 
mediating  idea,  when  she  came  to  notice  how 
Orion  also  gradually  became  partially  inverted 
during  her  journeys  from  English  latitudes  to 
those  of  the  far  southern  seas.     For  the  full 
moon,    as    she    thus    came    to    know,    must 
be    subject   to   similar   apparent    inversions; 
and   this   was   the   reason  why  the  "man   in' 
the  moon"  had  therefore  been  undiscoverable 
when  she  had  heretofore  looked  for  him  in 
Australian  skies. 

175 


THE   PROBLEM  OF   CHRISTIANITY 

IV 

IjyTien  processes  of  comparison  grow  com- 
plicated, new  *Hhird"  terms  or  *' mediators" 
may  be  needed  at  each  stage  of  one's  under- 
taking'    So    it    is    when    a    literary   parallel 
between  two  poets  or  two   statesmen  is  in 
question.     Now  one  and  now  another  trait 
or  event  or  fortune  or   deed  may  stand  out 
as  the  mediating  idea.     But  always,  in  such 
parallels,  it  is  by  means  of  the  use  of  a  "third" 
that  each  act  of  comparison  is  made  possible, 
—  whether  the  case  in  question  be  simple  or 
complex.     And  the  mediator  plays  each  time 
r  the  part  which  Peirce  first  formally  defined. 
Let  there  arise  the  problem  of  drawing  a 
literary   parallel    between    Shakespeare    and 
Dante.     The  task  appears  hopelessly  complex 
and  indeterminate   until,  perhaps,  the  place 
which  the  sonnet    occupied  in  the    creative 
activity  of  each  poet  comes  to  our    minds. 
Then  indeed,  although  the  undertaking  is  still 
vastly  complicated,  it  is  no  longer  quite  so 
hopeless.     If    "with    this    key    Shakespeare 

176 


r 


r 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 
unlocked  his  heart,"  yet  held  fast  its  deepest 
mysteries;  while  Dante  accompanied  each  of 
the  sonnets  of  the  Vita  Nuora  with  a  comment 
and  an  explanation,  yet  left  unspoken  what 
most  fascinates  us  in  the  supernatural  figure 

of  his  beloved, -then  "the  sonnet,"  viewed 
as  an  Idea  of  a  poetical  form,  mediates  between 
our  Ideas  of  the  two  poets,  and  represents  or< 
mterprets  each  of  these  ideas  to  the  other. 

Ihis  last  example  suggests  an  endless  wealth 
of  complexities.  And  the  interpretation  in 
question  is  also  endlessly  inadequate  to  our 

demands.  But  on  its  highest  levels,  as  in  its 
amplest  instances,  the  process  of  explicit 
comparison  is  thus  triadic,  and  to  notice  this 
fact  IS,  for  the  purpose  of  our  study  of  com- 
parison, illuminating. 

For  when  we  merely  set  pairs  of  objects 
before  us,  and  watch  their  resemblances  and 
d-fferences,  we  soon  lose  ourselves  in  mazes. 
Yet  even  when  the  mazes  are  indeed  not  to  be 

penetrated  by  any  skill,  still  a  triadic  compari- 
son IS  much  more  readily  guided  towards  the 
"gat.       How  does  A  differ  from  C?"    If  yon 


VOL.  II 


177 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

can  reply  to  this  question  by  saying  that,  by 
means  of  B,  A  can  be  altogether  transformed 
into  C,  or  can,  at  least,  be  brought  into  a  close 
resemblance  to  C,  then  the  comparison  of  A 
to  C  is  made  definite. 

Let   me  choose  still  one  more  illustration 
of  such  a  comparison.     This  time  the  illus- 
tration  shall    not    come    from    the    literary 
realm ;   yet  it  shall  be  more  complex  than  is 
the   instance   of   the   comparison   between   a 
written  word  and  its  image  in  the  mirror. 
If  you  cut  a  strip  of  paper,  —  perhaps  an 
inch   wide   and   ten   inches   long,  — you   can 
bring  the  two  ends  together  and  fasten  them 
with  glue.     The  result  will  be  a  ring-strip  of 
paper,  whose  form  is  of  a  type  very  familiar  in 
case  of  belts,  finger-rings,  and  countless  other 
objects.     But  this  form  can  be  varied  in  an 
interesting   way.     Before    bringing   the   ends 
of  the  strip  together,  let  one  end  of  the  paper 
be  turned  180°.     Holding  the  twisted  end  of 
the  strip  fast,  glue  it  to  the  other.     There 
now  results  an  endless  strip  of  paper  having  m 
it  a  single  twist.     Lay  side  by  side  an  ordinary 

178 


4 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

ring-strip  that  has  no  twist,  and  a  ring-strip 
of  paper  that  has  been  made  in  the  way  just 
indicated.  The  latter  strip  has  a  single 
twist  in  it.  Hereupon  ask  a  person  who  has 
not  seen  you  make  the  two  ring-strips,  to 
compare  them,  and  to  tell  you  wherein  they 
agree  and  wherein  they  differ. 

To  your  question  an  ordinary  observer,  to 
whom  this  new  form  of  ring-strip  is  unfamiliar, 
will  readily  answer  that  they  obviously  differ 
because  one  of  them  has  no  twist  in  it,  while 
the  other  certainly  has  some  kind  of  twist  be- 
longing to  its  structure.  So  far  the  one  whom 
you  question  indeed  makes  use  of  a  "third" 
idea.  But  this  idea  probably  remains,  so 
far,  vague  in  his  mind,  and  it  will  take  your 
uninformed  observer  some  time  to  make  his 
comparison  at  all  complete  and  explicit. 

In  order  to  aid  him  in  his  task,  you  may 
hereupon  call  his  attention  to  the  further  fact 
that  the  ring-strip  which  contains  the  single 
twist  has  two  extraordinary  properties.  It 
has,  namely,  but  one  side ;  and  it  also  has  but 
one  edge.     The  mention  of  this  fact  will  at 

179 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

first  perplex  the  uninitiated  observer.  But 
when  he  has  taken  the  trouble  to  study  the 
new  form,  he  will  find  that  the  idea  of  a  "one- 
sided strip  of  paper"  enables  him  to  compare 
the  new  and  the  old  form,  and  to  interpret 
his  idea  of  the  new  ring-form  to  his  old  idea 
of  an  ordinary  ring  such  as  has  no  twist,  and 
possesses  two  sides. 

V 

In  all  the  cases  of  explicit  comparison  which 
we  have  just  considered,  what  takes  place  has, 
.  despite  the  endless  varieties  of  circumstance, 
an  uniform  character. 

Whoever  compares  has  before  him  what  we 
have  called  two  distinct  ideas ;  perhaps  his 
ideas  of  these  two  printed  or  written  words; 
or  again,  his  ideas  of  these  two  ring-strips  of 
paper ;  or,  in  another  instance,  his  ideas  of 
Dante  and  of  Shakespeare. 

And  the  term  "  idea  "  is  used,  in  the  present 
discussion,  in  the  sense  which  James  and  other 
representative  pragmatists  have  made  famil- 
iar  in  current  discussion.     Let  us  then  hold 

180 


^1 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

clearly  in  mind  this  definition  of  the  term 
"  idea."  For  we  shall  even  thereby  be  led  to 
note  facts  which  will  lead  us  beyond  what 
this  definition  emphasizes. 

^n  idea,  in  this  sense,  is  a  more  or  less 
practical   and  active    process,   a    "leading,'' 
as  James  calls  it,  whereby  some  set  of  con- 
ceptions and  perceptions  tend  to  be  brought 
into    desirable    connectionsf^  An    idea    may 
consist  mainly  of  some  effort  to  characterize 
the  data  of  perception   through   the  use  of 
fitting  conceptions.     Or,  again,  an  idea  may 
be  a  prediction  of  future  perceptions.     Or,  an 
idea  may  be  an  active  seeking  for  a  way  to 
translate  conceptual  "bank-notes"  into  per- 
ceptual cash.     In  any  one  idea,   either  the 
perceptual  or  the  conceptual  elements  may, 
at   any   one   moment,   predominate.     If   the 
conceptual   element   is   too   marked   for   our 
purposes,  the  idea  stands  in  need  of  perceptual 
fulfilment.     If  the  perceptual  element  is  too 
rich   for   our   momentary  interests,  the   idea 
needs  further  conceptual  clarification.     In  any 
case,   however,   according   to   this   view,^he 

181 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

motives  of  an  idea  are  practical,  and  the  con- 
stituents of  an  idea  are  either  the  data  of  per- 
ception, or  the  conceptual  processes  whereby^ 
we  characterize  or  predict  or  pursue  such  data^ 
[But  when,  in  Peirce's  sense  of  the  word, 
we  have  to  make  an  explicit  comparison,  we 
have  before  us  two  distinct  and  contrasting 
ideas.     It  is  their  distinctness,  itjs  their  con- 
trast, which  determines  our  task.     And  these 
ideas  involve,  in  general,  not  only  different 
perceptual  and  different  conceptual  constitu- 
ents, but  also  different  and  sometimes  con- 
flicting *' leadings,"   different  and  sometimes 
mutally  clashing  interests,  various  and  mutu- 
ally   estranged    motives,    activities,   or    con- 
structions.    These  two  ideas  may  contrast  as 
do  two  forms  of  art.     Or  they  may  stand  out 
the  one  over  against  the  other  as  if  they  were 
two  geometrical  structures.     They  may  collide 
as  do  two  warring  passions.     They  may  first 
meet  as  simple  strangers  in  our  inner  world. 
Their  relations  may  resemble  those  of  plaintiff 
and  defendant  in  a  suit  at  law.     Or  they  may 
be  as  interestingly  remote  from  one  another  as 

182 


THE   WILL  TO  INTERPRET 


""^^PRET 


are  the  spiritual  realms  of  tw^o  great  poets. 
In  such  endlessly  various  fashions  may  the 
two  ideas  come  before  us. 

The  essential  fact  for  our  present  study  is 
that,  in  case  of  the  comparisons  which  Peirce 
discusses,  the  problem,  whether  you  call  it  a 
theoretical  or  a  practical  problem,  is  not  that 
of  linking  percepts  to  their  fitting  concepts, 
nor  that  of  paying  the  bank  bills  of  concep- 
tion in  the  gold  of  the  corresponding  p^cep- 
tions.  On  the  contrary, (it  is  the  problem 
either  of  arbitrating  the  conflicts ;  or  of  bring- 
ing to  mutual  understanding  the  estrange- 
ments ;  or  of  uniting  in  some  community  the 
separated  lives  of  these  two  distinct  ideas,  — 
of  ideas  which,  when  left  to  themselves,  de- 
cline to  coalesce  or  to  cooperate,  or  to  enter  i 
into  one  lifel 

[This  problem,  in  the  cases  of  comparison 
with  which  Peirce  deals,  is  solved  through  a 
new^  acL  For  this  act  originality  and  some- 
times even  genius  may  be  required.  \  This  new 
act  consists  in  the  invention  or  discovery  of 
some  third  idea,  distinct  from  both  the  ideas 

183 


'ocesses 


PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

which  are  to  be  compared.     This  third  idea, 
when  once  found,  interprets  one  of  the  ideas 
which  are  the  objects  of  the  comparison,  and 
interprets  it  to  the  other,  or  in  the  Hght  of  the 
other?/    What  such  interpretation  means,  the 
instances    already    considered    have    in    part 
made  clear.     But  the  complexity  and  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  processes  involved  require  a 
further  study.     And  this  further  study  may 
here  be  centred  about  the  question :  What  is 
gained  by  the  sort  of  comparison  which  Peirce 
thus  characterizes  ?     And,  since  we  have  said 
that  all  such  comparison  involves  an  activity 
of  interpreting  one  idea  in  the  Ught  of  another, 
we  may  otherwise  state  our   question  thus : 
LWhat,  in  these  cases  of  -comparison,   is   the 
innermost  aim  of  the  Will  to  Interpret  which 
all  these  processes  of  comparison  manifestjj 

VI 

The  rhythm  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic, 
wherein  thesis,  antithesis,  and  higher  synthesis 
play  their  famihar  parts,  will  here  come  to 
the  minds  of  some   who   follow   my  words; 

184 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 
and  you  may  ask  wherein  Peirce's  processes 
of  comparison  and  interpretation  differ  from 
those  dialectical  movements  through  division 
into  synthesis,  which  Hegel  long  since  used  as 
the  basis  of  his  philosophy.     I  reply  at  once 
that  Peirce's  theory  of  comparison,  and  of  the 
mediating  idea  or  -third"  which  interprets 
IS,  historically  speaking,  a  theoiy  not  derived 
from  Hegel,  by  whom  at  the  time  when  he 
wrote  these  early  logical  papers,  Peirce  had 
been  in  no  notable  way  influenced.     I  reply 
further,  that  Peirce's  concept  of  interpreta' 
tion  defines  an  extremely  general  process,  of 
which   the   Hegelian   dialectical   triadic   pro-^ 
cess  IS  a  very  special  case.     Hegel's  elemen- 
tary   illustrations   of  his   own   processes   are 
ethical    and    historical.     Peirce's    theory    of 
comparison   is    quite    as  well    illustrated    by 
purely  mat!  .matical  as   by  explicitly  social  | 
mstances.    XW  is  no  essential  inconsistency   ' 
between   the   logical   and   psychological   mo- 
tives  which  lie  at  the  basis  of  Peirce's  theoiy 
of  the  triad  of  interpretation,  and  the  Hegelian 
interest  in  the  play  of  thesis,  antithesis,  and 

185 


A 


E  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

higher  synthesis.  But  Peirce's  theory,  with 
its  expHcitly  empirical  origin  and  its  very 
exact  logical  working  out,  promises  new  Hght 
upon  matters  which  Hegel  left  profoundly 
problematic. 

Returning,  however,  to  those  illustrations 
of  Peirce's  theory  of  comparison  which  I  have 
already  placed  before  you,  let  us  further  con- 
sider the  motives  which  make  a  comparison 
of  distinct  and  contrasting  ideas  significant 
for  the  one  who  compares. 

An  idea,  as  I  have  said,  is,  in  James's  sense, 
a  practical  "leading."  An  idea,  if,  in  James's 
sense,  successful,  and  if  successfully  employed, 
leads  through  concepts  to  the  desirable  or  to 
the  corresponding  percepts.  But  a  compari- 
son of  ideas  —  that,  too,  is  no  doubt  an  active 
process.  To  what  does  it  lead  ?  It  leads,  as 
we  have  seen,  to  a  new,  to  a  third,  to  an  in- 
terpreting idea.  And  what  is  this  new  idea  ? 
Is  it  "cash,"  or  has  it  only  "credit-value".'^ 
What  does  it  present  to  our  view  ?  What 
does  it  bring  to  our  treasury  ? 

One  must  for  the  first  answer  this  question 

186 


I J 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

in  a  very  old-fashioned  way.  [The  new,  the 
third,  the  interpreting  idea,  in  these  elemen- 
tary cases  of  comparison,  shows  us,  as  far  as  it 
goes,  ourselves,  and  also  creates  in  us  a  new 
grade  of  clearness  regarding  what  we  are  and 
what  we  mean.     First,  I  repeat,  the  new  or 
third    idea   shows    us    ourselves,    as    we   are. 
Next,  it  also  enriches  our  world  of  self-con- 
sciousness.    It  at  once  broadens  our  outlook 
and  gives  our  mental  realm  definiteness  and 
self-control,   ^t  teaches  one  of  our  ideas  what 
another  of  our  ideas  means3  It  tells  us  how 
to  know  our  right  hand  from  the  left;    how 
to  connect  what  comes  to  us  in  fragments; 
how  to  live  as  if  life  had  some  coherent  aimj 
All  this  is  indeed,  thus  far,  very  elementary 
information  about  what  one  gains  by  being 
able  to  hold  three   ideas   at   once  in   mind. 
But,  in  our  own  day,  such  information  is  im- 
portant information.     For  our  age,  supposing 
that    the  ^contrast    between    perception    and 
conception    exhausts    the    possible    types    of 
cognitive  processesT^  is  accustomed   to  listen 
to  those  who  teach  us  that  self-knowledge  also 

187 


\'  t 


E  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

must  be  either  intuitive  (and,  in  that  case, 
^  merely  fluent  and  transient)  or  else  conceptual 

(and,  in  that  case,  abstract  and  sterile). 
-     But  a  fdual  antithesis  between  perceptual 
and  conceptual  knowledge  is  once  for  all  in- 
adequate to  the  wealth  of  the  facts  of  life3 
When  you  accompHsh  an  act  of  comparison, 
the  knowledge  which  you   attain  is  neither 
merely  conceptual,  nor  merely  perceptual,  nor 
yet  merely  a  practically  active  synthesis  of  per- 
ception and  conception.    It  is  a  third  type  of 
knowledge.     It  interprets.     It   surveys   from 
above.     It  is  an  attainment  of  a  larger  unity 
of  consciousnessT*  It  is  a  conspectus.     As  the 
tragic  artist  looks  down  upon  the  many  varying 
hves  of  his  characters,  and  sees  their  various 
motives  not  interpenetrating,  but  cooperating, 
in  the  dramatic  action  which  constitutes  his 
creation,  —  so  any  one  who  compares  distinct 
ideas,  and  discovers  the  third   or   mediating 
idea  whicl^nterprets  the  meaning  of  one  in 
the  light  of  the  othei^ thereby  discovers,  or 
I  invents,  a  realm  of  conscious  unity  which  con- 
^  stitutes  the  very  essence  of  the  Ufe  of  reason. 

188 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

Bergson,  in  his  well-krown  portrayal,  has 
glorified  instinct  in  its  contrast  with  the  in- 
tellect. The  intellect,  as  he  holds,  is  a  mere 
user  of  tools.  Its  tools  are  concepts.  It  uses 
them  in  its  practical  daily  work  to  win  useful 
percepts.  It  loves  to  be  guided  in  its  daily 
industries  by  rigid  law.  It  is  therefore  most 
at  home  in  the  realm  of  mechanism  and  of 
death.  Life  escapes  its  devices.  Its  concepts 
are  essentially  inadequate.  Instinct,  on  the 
contrary,  so  far  as  man  still  preserves  that 
filmy  cloud  of  luminous  instinct  and  of  in- 
tuition which,  in  Bergson's  opinion,  constitutes 
the  most  precious  resource  of  genius,  per- 
ceives, and  sympathizes,  and  so  comes  in 
touch  with  reality. 

That  this  account  of  the  cognitive  process 
is  inadequate,  both  the  artist  and  the  proph- 
ets combine  with  the  scientific  observers  of 
nature,  with  the  mathematicians,  and  with  the 
great  constructive  statesmen,  to  show  us. 
Comparison  is  the  instrument  of  what  one 
may  call,  according  to  one's  pleasure,  either 
the  observant  reason,  or  the  rational  intuition 

189 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

whereby  the  world  Is  leading  minds  have  always 
been  guided.  And  it  is  comparison,  it  is 
interpretation,  which  teaches  us  how  to  deal 
^  with  the  living,  with  the  significant,  and  with 
the  genuinely  real. 

Darwin,  for  instance,  as  a  naturalist,  saw, 
compared,  and  mediated.     We  all  know  how 
the  leading  ideas  of  Malthus  furnished  the 
mediating  principle,  the  third,  whereby  Dar- 
win first  came  to  conceive  how  the  contrasting 
ideas  with  which  his  hypotheses  had  to  deal 
could  be  brought  into  unity.     And  that  such 
comparison  is  peculiarly  adapted  to  deal  with 
the  phenomena  of  life,  let  not  only  the  genesis 
of  Darwin's  ideas,  but  the  place  of  the  pro- 
cess of  comparison  in  the  development  of  all 
the  organic  sciences,  show. 

If  we  turn  to  the  other  extreme  of  the  world 
of  human  achievement,  in  order  to  learn  what 
is  the  sovereign  cognitive  process,  we  shall 
find  the  same  answer.  For  let  us  ask,  —  By 
means  of  what  insight  did  Amos  the  prophet 
meet  the  religious  problems  of  his  own  people 
and  of  his  own  day.^    He  faced  tragic  con- 

190 


\ 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

trasts,  moral,  religious,  and  political.  War- 
ring ideas  were  before  him,  —  ideas,  each  of 
which  sought  its  own  percepts,  through  its 
own  concepts  of  God,  of  worship,  and  of  suc- 
cess. But  Amos  introduced  into  the  con- 
troversies of  his  time  the  still  tragic,  but  in- 
spiring and  mediating,  idea  of  the  God  who,  as 
he  declared,  delights  not  in  sacrifices  but  in 
righteousness.  And  by  this  one  stroke  of  re-  '- 
ligious  genius  the  prophet  directed  the  re- 
ligious growth  of  the  centuries  that  were  to 

follow. 

.  Think  over  the  burial  psalm,  or  the  Pauline 
chapters  on  Charity  and  the  Resurrection,  if 
you  would  know  what  part  comparison  and 
mediation  play  in  the  greatest  expressions  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  Remember  Lear 
or  the  Iliad,  if  vou  wish  to  recall  the  functions 
of  contrast  and  of  mediation  in  poetry.  Let 
the  Sistine  Madonna  or  Beethoven's  Fifth 
Symphony  illustrate  the  same  process  in 
other  forms  of  the  artistic  consciousness. 

If   once  you  have  considered   a   few   such 
instances,  then,    summing   up   their   familiar 

191 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
lessons,  you  may  note  that  in  none  of  these 
cases  is  it  conception,  in  none  of  them  is  it 
bare  perception,  least  of  all  is  it  inarticulate 
intuition,  which  has  won  for  us  the  gr^test 
discoveries,  the  incomparable  treasures  in 
science,  in  art,  or  in  religion. 

The  really  creative  insight  has  come  from 
those  who  first  compared  and  then  mediated, 
who  could  first  see  two  great  ideas  at  once, 
and  then  find  the  new  third  idea  which  medi- 
ated between  them,  and  illumined. 

We  often  use  the  word  "vision"  for  this  in- 
sight which  looks  down  upon  ideas  as  from 
above,   and    discovers   the   "third,"   thereby 
uniting  what  was  formerly  estranged.     If  by 
the  word  « intuition "  one  chooses   to   mean 
this  grade  of  insight,  then  one  may  indeed 
say  that  creative  mental  prowess   depends, 
in  general,  upon  such  intuition.     But  such  in- 
tuition is  no  mere  perception.     It  is  certainly 
not  conception.     And   the  highest   order  of 
genius  depends  upon  reaching  the  stage  of 
Peirce's  "third"  type  of  ideas.     Comparison, 
leading  to  the  discovery  of  that  which  mediates 

192 


J 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

and  solves,  and  tq  the  vision  of  unity,  is  the 
psychological  basis  of  poetry,  as  Shakespeare 
wrote,  and  of  such  prophecy  as  Paul  praised 
when  he  estimated  the  spiritual  gifts.  u£o^^-  ^ 
parison,  then,  and  interpretation  constitute  j 
the  cognitive  function  whereby  we  deal  with 
life?  Instinct  and  bare  perception,  left  to 
themselves,  can  never  reach  this  level. 

VII 

'  When  we  consider  the  inner  life  of  the  in- 
dfvidual  man,  the  Will  to  Interpret  appears, 
then,  as  the  will  to  be  self-possessed.     One 
who  compares  his  own  ideas,  views  them  as 
from   above.     He   aims   to   pass   from   blind 
"leadings"  to  coherent  insight  and  to  resolute 
self-guidance.     What  one  wins  as  the  special 
object  of  one's  insight  depends,  in  such  cases, 
upon  countless  varying  psychological  condi- 
tions, and  upon  one's  success  in  finding  or  in 
inventing  suitable   mediators   for    the   inter- 
pretation of  one  idea  in  the  light  of  another. 
It  may  therefore  appear  as  if  in  this  realm 
of    interior   comparisons,    where    the    objects 


VOL.  II  —  O 


193 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


compared  are  pairs  of  ideas,  and  whei'-e  re- 
sults of  comparison  consist  in  the  invention 
of  a  third,  there  could  be  no  question  of  at- 
taining fixed  or  absolute  truth.     If  anywhere 
pragmatism   could    be   decisively   victorious; 
if  anywhere  the  purely  relative  and  transient 
would  seem  in  possesssion  of  the  field,  —  one 
might  suppose  that  comparison  would  con- 
stantly furnish  us  with  instances  of  relative, 
shifting,  and  fluent  truth; 
M      As  a  fact,  however,  this  is  not  the  case. 
\    \-*  Comparison,  which  is  so  powerful  an  instru- 
i :  ment  in  dealing  with  life,  and  with  the  fluent 
and  the  personal,  ^js  also  perfectly  capable  of 
bringing  us  into  the  presence  of  the  exact  and 
of   the   necessary.     All    depends    upon    what 
ideas  are  compared,  and  upon  the  purpose  for 
which  they  are  compared,  and  upon  the  skill 
with  which  the  vision  of  unity  is  attained. 

Let  the  comparison  of  the  two  ring-strips  of 
paper  show  what  I  here  have  in  mind.  The 
difference  between  a  ring-strip  which  con- 
tains a  single  twist,  and  another  which  is 
constructed  in  the  usual  way,  seem§  at  first 

194 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

sight  to  be  both  insignificant  and  inexact.  A 
closer  study  shows  that  the  geometry  of  sur- 
faces that  possess  but  a  single  side  can  be 
developed  into  as  exact  a  branch  of  pure  math- 
ematics as  you  can  mention.  The  develop- 
ment in  question  would  depend  upon  assuming, 
quite  hypothetically,  a  few  simple  principles 
which  are  suggested,  although  not  indeed 
capable  of  being  proved,  by  experience  of 
the  type  which  recent  pragmatism  has  well 
analyzed.  The  branch  of  pure  mathematics 
in  question  would  consist  of  deductions 
from  these  few  simple  principles.  The 
deductions  would  interpret  these  principles, 
viewed  in  some  sort  of  unity  and  compared 
together. 

But  recent  pragmatism  has  not  well  an- 
alyzed the  process  whereby,  in  pure  mathe- 
matics, the  consequences  which  follow  from  a 
set  of  exactly  stated  hypotheses  are  deter- 
mined. This  process/the  genuine  process  of 
deduction,  depends  upon  a  series  vj)f  ideal 
experiments)  These  experiments  are  per- 
formed by  means  of  putting  together  ideas, 

195 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

two  and  two,  by  comparing  the  ideas  that  are 
thus  brought  together,  by  discovering  medi- 
ators, and  by  reading  the  results  of  the 
combination.  This  process  may  lead  to 
perfectly  exact  results  which  are  absolutely 
true. 

I  know  of  no  writer  who  has  better  or  more 
exactly  analyzed  the  way  in  which  such  ideal 
experiments  can  lead  to  novel  and  precise 
results  than  Peirce  has  done.  His  analysis 
of  the  I  deductive  process'^  was  first  made 
a  good  while  since,  and  anticipated  re- 
sults which  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  and  others 
have  since  reached  by  other  modes  of  pro- 
cedure. 

Peirce  has  shown  that,  when  you  interpret 
your  combinations  of  ideas  through  ideal 
experiments,  using,  for  instance,  diagrams 
and  symbols  as  aids,  the  outcome  may  be  a 
truth  as  exact  as  the  ideas  compared  are 
themselves  exact.  It  may  also  be  in  your 
own  experience  as  novel  a  result  as  your 
ideal  experiment  is  novel.  It  may  also  be  an 
absolute  and  immutable  truth. 

196 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

What  you  discover,  in  a  case  of  deduction, 
is  not  that  certain  conclusions  are,  in  them- 
selves, considered  true,  but  that  they  follow 
from,  that  they  are  implied  by,  certain  hypo-  | 
thetically  assumed  premises.  /_But  a  discovery 
that  certain  premises  imply   a  certain  con-  ^ 
elusion,  is  the  discovery  of  a  fact.     This  fact 
may  be  found,  not  by  perception,  nor  by  con- 
ception,    but    by   interpretation/   None    the  \ 
less,  it  is  a  fact  and  it  may  be  momentous. 

It  is  customary  to  imagine  that  such  a 
deductive  process  can  get  out  of  given  prem- 
ises nothing  novel,  but  only  (as  people  often 
say)  —  only  what  was  already  present  in  the 
premises.  This  customary  view  of  deduction 
is  incorrect.  As  Peirce  repeatedly  pointed 
out  (long  before  any  other  writer  had  explic- 
itly dealt  with  the  matter) ,  you  can  write  out 
upon  a  very  few  sheets  of  paper  all  the  prin- 
ciples which  are  actually  used  as  the  funda- 
mental hypotheses  that  lie  at  the  basis  of  those 
branches  of  pure  mathematics  which  have 
thus  far  been  developed.  Yet  the  logical 
consequences    which    follow    from    these    few 

197 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

mathematical  hypotheses  are  so  numerous 
that  every  year  a  large  octavo  volume  in  fine 
print  is  needed  to  contain  merely  the  titles, 
and  very  brief  abstracts,  of  the  technical 
papers  containing  novel  results  which  have 
been,  during  that  year,  pubhshed  as  researches 
in  pure  mathematics. 

The  mathematical  papers  in  question  em- 
body, in  general,  consequences  already  im- 
plied by  the  few  fundamental  hypotheses 
which  I  have  just  mentioned.  An  infinite 
wealth  of  still  unknown  consequences  of  the 
same  principles  remains  yet  to  be  explored 
and  stated.  All  of  these  consequences  can 
be  won,  in  pure  mathematics,  by  a  purely  de- 
ductive procedure. 

Thus  endlessly  wealthy,  thus  possessed  of 
an  inexhaustible  fecundity,  is  the  genuine 
deductive  process.  Peirce  long  ago  showed 
why.  And  while  the  mathematical  procedure 
which  is  in  question  cannot  here  be  further 
discussed,  it  is  enough  for  our  present  purpose 
to  indicate  why  this  fecundity  of  deduction 
exists. 

198 


\ 


/ 


< 


THE   WILL   TO   INTERPRET 

Ipeduction,  in  the  real  life  of  the  exact 
sciences,  is  a  process  that  recent  pragmatism 
has  no  means  of  describing  simply  because 
recent  pragmatism  is  the  prey  of  the  dual 
classification  of  the  cognitive  processes,  and 
views  what  it  calls  the  *' workings"  of  ideas 
merely  in  terms  of  the  relations  between  con- 
ceptions  and  perceptions,  —  between  "credit-  | 
values"  and  "cash- values." 

Pragmatism,  as  James  defined  it,  regards 
an  idea  as  a  "leading,"  whereby  one  pursues 
or  seeks  particulars ;  and  whereby  one  some- 
times obtains,  and  sometimes  fails  to  obtain, 
the  "cash-values"  which  one  aims  to  get. 
Such  a  doctrine  has  no  place  for  the  under- 
standing of  what  happens  when,  looking  down 
as  it  were  from  above,  one  compares  two  ideas, 
and  looks  for  a  mediating  idea.  But  just 
this  is  what  happens  in  all  cases  of  explicit 
comparison. 

Now  in  the  individual  case,  an  interpreta- 
tion, a  mediating  idea,  may  come  to  mind 

199 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

through  almos^  any  play  of  association,  or 
as  the  result  of  almost  any  degree  of  skill  in 
invention,  or  as  the  outcome  either  of  serious 
or  of  playful  combinations.  In  consequence, 
an  interpretation  may  prove  to  be,  in  the  single 
case,  of  purely  relative  and  momentary  truth 
and  value. 

But  this,  on  the  other  hand,  need  not  be 
the  fortune  of  interpretation,  ^he  results  of 
a  comparison  may  express  absolute  truths,^^ 
truths  which  once  seen  can  never  be  reversed. 
This  absoluteness  itself  may  be  due  to  either 
one  of  two  reasons. 

fin  pure  mathematics,  a  deduction,  if  cor- 
rect at  all,  leads  to  an  absolutely  correct  and 
irrevocably^  true  discovery)  of  a  relation  of 
implication  between  exactly  stated  premises 
and  some  conclusionJ  Deduction  does  this 
because  deduction  results  from  a  comparison, 
and  because  the  ideas  compared  may  be,  and 
in  pure  mathematics  are,  exact  enough  to  sug- 
gest, at  some  moment,  to  the  observant  rea- 
soner,  an  interpretation  which,  if  it  apphes 
at  all,   applies  universally  to  every  pair  of 

200 


S3^ 

i 


THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

ideas  identical  in    meaning  with    the  pair  of  f 
ideas  here  compared. 

The  act  of  comparison  may  be  momentary, 
and  may  even  be  as  an  event,  an  accident. 
The  inventive  watcher  of  his  own  ideas  may 
have  been  led  to  his  deduction  by  whatever 
motive  you  please.  But  the  interpretation, 
once  discovered,  may  nevertheless  represent 
a  truth  which  is  absolute  precisely  because  it  is 
hypothetical.  For  the  assertion  :  **P  implie:^ 
Q,"  or  *'If  P,  then  Q,"  is  an  assertion  about 
a  matter  of  fact.  And  this  assertion,  if  true 
at  all,  is  always  and  irrevocably  true  about 
the  same  pair  of  ideas  or  propositions :  P  and 

Q. 

Or  again,  the  result  of  an  interpretation 
may  be  absolutely  true,  because,  for  whatever 
reason,  the  interpretation  in  question  counsels 
the  one  who  makes  the  interpretation  to  do 
some  determinate  and  individual  deed.  This 
deed  may  be  such  as  to  accomplish,  at  the 
moment  when  it  is  done,  some  ideallv  valuable 
result.  But  deeds  once  done  are  irrevocable. 
\  If,  by  interpreting  your  ideas  in  a  certain  way, 

201 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

at  a  certain  moment,  you  have  been  led  to  do 
a  worthy  deed,  —  then  the  interpretation  re- 
mains as  irrevocably  true  as  the  good  deed 
remains  irrevocably  done)^ 

The  principle,  then,  relating  to  the   value 
and  to  the  truth  of  one's  acts  of  interior  and 
conscious    comparison,   is   that    they  express 
an  insight  which  surveys,  as  from  above,  an 
unitv   wherein   are   combined   various   ideas. 
These  ideas,  as  they  first  come,  are  pragmatic 
leadings  which  may  be  mutually  estranged, 
or  nmtually  hostile,  or  widely  contrasted,  or 
intimately     interconnected.     But,     whatever 
the  ideas  may  have  been  before  they  were 
compared,  — as  a  result  of  the  comparison 
of  the  two  ideas,  one  of  them  is  interpreted 
in  the  light  of  the  other.     The  interpretation 
may  possess  all  the  exactness  of  mathematics, 
or  all  the  transiency  of  a  chance  observation 
of  the  play  of  one's  inner  life.     It  may  result 
in  Paul's   vision   of   the  charity   that  never 
faileth,  ruling  supreme  over  the  contrasts  and 
the  bickerings  of  passing  passion ;  or  it  may 
solve  a  problem  of  comparative  natural  history 

202 


\ 


THE   WILL  TO   INTERPRET 

or  of  comparative  philology.     Whatever   the 
varieties  of  the  cases  in  question[^on.parison 
can  occur,  and  can  reach  truth,  simply  because 
we  are  wider  than  any  of  our  ideas,  and  can 
win  a  vision  which  shall  look  down  upon  our 
own  inner  warfare,  and  upon  our  own  former 
self-estrangements,  as  well  as  upon  our  own 
inner    contrasts    of    exact    definitionj    This 
vision  observes  not  data  of  sense  and  not  mere 
abstract  concepts.     Nor  does  it  consist  simply 
in  our  pragmatic  leadings,  and  in  their  suc- 
cesses and  failures.     It  observes  what  may 
interpret   ideas   to   other   ideas;   as  prophets 
and    poets    interpret    to    us    what    otherwise 
would  remain,  in  seeming,  hopelessly  various 
and  bewilderingly   strange.     It   is   not   more 
intuition  that  we  want.     It  Is"  such  interpre- 
tation  which   alone  can  enhghten  and  guide 
and    significantly    inspire.     Upon    the    com- 
parisons which  thus   interpret,   our   spiritual 
triumphs   depend.      Such    triumphs   are    not 
merely  the  pragmatic  successes  of  single  ideaf 
They   are   the   attainment   of   mastery    ov^ 
Ufe. 

203 


HE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


IX 

Our  lengthy  study  of  comparison  and  inter- 
pretation, as  they  are  present  in  the  inner  Ufe 
of  the  individual  man,  has  prepared  us  for  a 
new  view  of  the  social  meaning  of  the  Will 
to  Interpret.  Here  I  must  once  more  take  a 
temporary  leave  of  Peirce's  guidance,  and  trust 
to  my  own  resources. 

One  who  compares  a  pair  of  his  own  ideas 
may  attain,  if  he  is  successful,  that  vision  of 
unity,  that  grade  of  self-possession,  which  we 
have  now  illustrated.  But  one  who  under- 
takes  to  interpret  his  neighbor's  ideas  is  in  a 
different  position. 

In  general,  as  we  have  seen,  an  interpreter, 
in  his  social  relations  with  other  men,  deals 
with  two  different  minds,  neither  of  which  he 
identifies  with  his  own.  His  interpretation  is 
a  "third"  or  mediating  idea.  This  "third" 
is  aroused  in  the  interpreter's  mind  through 
signs  which  come  to  him  from  the  mind  that 
he  interprets.  He  addresses  this  "third" 
to  the  mind  to  which  he  interprets  the  first. 

204 


I 


THE   WILL  TO    INTERPRET 

The  psychology  of  the  process  of  social  in- 
terpretation, so  far  as  that  process  goes  on  in 
the  interpreter's  individual  mind,  is  identical 
with   that  psychology   of  comparison   which 
we  have  now  outlined.   Jiobody  can  interpret, 
unless  the  idea  which  he  interprets  has  become  s 
more  or  less  clearly  and  explicitly  one  of  his  \ 
own  ideas,  and    unless  he  compares  it  with  ( 
another  idea  which  is,  in  some  sense,  his  own^ 
But,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  interpre- 
ter, the  essential  difference  between  the  case 
where  he  is  interpreting  the  mind  of  one  of  his 
neighbors  to  the  mind  of  another  neighbor, 
and  the  case  wherein  he  is  comparing  two  ideas 
of  his  own,  is  a  difference  in   the  clearness 
of  vision  which  is,  under  human  conditions, 
attainable. 

When  I  compare  two  ideas  of  my  own,  the 
luminous  self-possession  which  then,  for  a  time, 
may  come  to  be  mine,  forms  for  me  an  ideal 
of  success  in  interpretation.  This  ideal  I  can 
attain  only  at  moments.  But  these  mo- 
ments set  a  model  for  all  my  interpretations 
to  follow. 


205 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIAN!! 


r 


When  I  endeavor  to  interpret  my  neigh- 
bor's mind,  my  interpretation  has  to  remain 
remote  from  its  goal.     The  luminous  vision  of 
the  results   of   comparison   comes  to  me,  at 
best,  only  partially  and  with  uncertainty.     My 
neighbor's  ideas  I  indeed  in  a  measure  grasp, 
and  compare  with  other  ideas,  and  interpret ; 
but,  as  I  do  this,  I  see  through  a  glass  darkly. 
Only    those    ideas    whose    comparisons    with 
other  ideas,  and  whose  resulting  triadic  in- 
terpretations I  can  vie\^face  to  face^can  ap- 
pear to  me  to  have  become  in  a  more  intimate 
and  complete  sense  my  own  individual  ideas. 
When  I  possess  certain  ideas  sufficiently  to 
enable  me  to  seek  for  their  interpretation, 
but  so  that,  try  as  I  will,  I  can  never  clearly 
survey,  as  from  above,  the  success  of  any  of 

^  my  attempted  interpretations,  —  then  these 
ideas  remain,  from  my  own  point  of  view, 
ideas   that   never   become    wholly    my    own. 

I^Therefore  these  relatively  alien  ideas  can  be 
interpreted  at  all  only  by  using  the  familiar 
hypothesis  that  they  belong  to  the  self  of  some 
one   else?    Under   ordinary  social  conditions 

206 


THE  WIL..   TO   INTERPRET 

this  other  mind  is  viewed  as  the  mind  of  my 
neighbor.     Neither  of  my  neighbor  nor  of  my- 
self have  I  any  direct  intuition.     But  of  my 
own  ideas  I  can  hope  to  win  the  knowledge 
which   the   most   successful   comparisons   ex- 
emplify. *  Of  my  neighbor's  ideas  I  can  never  i 
win,  under  human  conditions,  any  interpreta-  | 
tion    but    one    which    remains    hypothetical  j 
and    which    is    never   observed,    under    these 
human  conditions,   as  face  to  face  with  its 
own  object,   or  with  the  idea  of  the  other 
neighbors    to    whom    the    interpretation    is 
addressed. 

The  Will  to  Interpret  is,  in  our  social  re- 
lations, guided  by  a  purpose  which  we  are 
now  ready  to  bring  into  close  relations  with 
the  most  significant  of  all  the  ethical  ideals 
which,  in  our  foregoing  lectures,  we  have  por- 
trayed. 

I  The  interpreter,  the  mind  to  which  he  ad- 
dresses his  interpretation^  the  _ mind  which 
he  undertakes  to  interpret,  —  all  these  ap- 
pear, in  our  explicitly  human  and  social  world, 
as  three  distinct  selves,"-r-  sundered  by  chasms 

207 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CKRISTIANIT' 

which,    under   liuman   conditions,    we   never 
cross,  and  contrasting  in  their  inner  lives  in 
whatever  way  the   motives   of   men  at   any 
moment  chance  to  contrast. 
Lihe  Will  to  Interpret  undertakes  to  make 
of    these    three    selves    a    ConmiunityTT  In 
every  case  of  ideally  serious  and  loyal  effort 
truly  to  interpret  this  is  the  simplest,  but,  in 
its  deepest  motives,  the  most  purely  spiritual 
of  possible  communities.     Let   us  view  that 
simple  and  ideal  community  as  the  interpreter 
himself  views  it,  precisely  in  so  far  as  he  is 
sincere   and   truth-loving  in   his  purpose   as 
interpreter. 

X 

I,  the  interpreter,  regard  you,  my  neighbor, 
as  a  realm  of  ideas,  of  "leadings,"  of  mean- 
ings, of  pursuits,  of  purposes.  This  realm 
is  not  w;holly  strange  and  incomprehensible 
to  me.  |For  at  any  moment,  in  my  life  as 
interpreter,  I  am  dependent  upon  the  results 
of  countless  pre\aous  efforts  to  interpret. 
The   whole  past   history   of  civilization  has 

208 


THE   WILL   TO   INTERPRET 

resulted   in   that  form   and   degree  of  inter- 
pretation of  you  and  of  my  other  fellow-men 
which  I  already  possess,  at  any  instant  when 
I  begin  afresh  the  task  of  interpreting  your 
life  or  your  ideas.     You  are  to  me,  then,  a 
realm  of  ideas  which  lie  outside  of  the  centre 
which  my  will  to  interpret  can  momentarily 
illumine    with    the    clearest    grade    of  vision. 
But   I   am   discontent   with   my   narrowness 
and  with  your  estrangement.    U  seek  unity 
with  you.     And  since  the  same  will  to  inter- 
pret you  is  also  expressive  of  my  analogous 
interests  in  all  my  other  neighbors,,  what  I 
here  and  now  specifically  aim  to  do  is  this: 
I^mean  to  interpret  you  to  somebody  else,  to 
some  other  neighbor,  who  is  neither  yourself 
nor  myself.     Three  of  us,  then,  I  seek  to  bring 
into  the  desired  unity  of  interpretation^ 

Now  if  I  could  succeed  in  interpreting  you 
to  another  man  as  fully  as,  in  my  clearest 
moments,  I  interpret  one  of  my  ideas  to 
another,  my  process  of  interpretation  would 
simply  reduce  to  a  conscious  comparison  of 
ideas.  .  I  should  then  attain,  as  I  succeeded 


VOL.  II  —  P 


209 


THE   PROBLEM!  OF  CHRISTIANITY  Ji 

in   my  interpretation,   a  luminous   vision   of 
your  ideas,  of  my  own,  and  of  the  ideas  of 
the  one  to  whom  I  interpret  you..    This  vi- 
sion would  look  down,  as  it  were,  from  above. 
In  the  light  of  it,  we,  the  selves  now  sundered 
by   the  chasms   of  the  social   world,   should 
indeed    not    interpenetrate.     For    our    func- 
tions as  the  mind  interpreted,  the  mind  to 
whom  the  other  is  interpreted,  and  the  inter- 
preter, would  remain  as  distinct  as  now  they 
are.     There  would  be  no  melting  together,  no 
blending,  no  mystic  blur,  and  no  lapse  into 
mere  intuition.     But  for  me  the  vision  of  the 
successful  interpretation  would  simply  be  the 
attainment  of  my  own  goal   as  interpreter. 
jThis  attainment  would  as  little  confound  our 
persons    as   it   would    divide   our   substance. 
^  We  should  remain,  for  me,  many,  even  when 
viewed  in  this  unity. 

Yet  this  vision,  if  I  could  win  it,  would 
constitute  an  event  wherein  your  will  to  be 
interpreted  would  also  be  fulfilled.  For  if 
you  are  indeed  ready  to  accept  my  service  as 
interpreter,  you  even  now  possess  this  will 

210 


:rHE    WILL   TO   INTERPRET 


to  be  /interpreted.  And  if  there  exists  the 
one  to  whom  I  can  interpret  you,  that  other 
also  wills  that  you  should  be  interpreted  to 
b'lm,  and  that  I  should  be  the  interpreter. 

If,  then,  I  am  worthy  to  be  an  interpreter 
at  all,  we  three,  —  you,  my  neighbor,  whose 
mind  I  would  fain  interpret,  —  you,  my 
kindly  listener,  to  whom  I  am  to  address  my 
interpretation,  —  we  three  constitute  a  Com- 
munity. Let  us  give  to  this  sort  of  com- 
munity a  technical  name.  ^Let  us  call  it  a 
Community  of  Interpretation.   "^ 

The  form  of  such  a  community  is  deter- 
minate^ 
f  One  goal  lies  before  us  all,  one  event  towards 
which  we  all  direct  our  efforts  when  we  take 
part  in  this  interpretation.  This  ideal  event  is 
a  goal,  unattainable  under  human  social  condi- 
tions, but  definable,  as  an  ideal,  in  terms  of 
the  perfectly  familiar  experience  which  every 
successful  comparison  of  ideas  involves.  It 
is  a  goal  towards  which  we  all  may  work  to- 
gether :  you,  when  you  give  me  the  signs 
that  I  am  to  interpret ;  our  neighbor,  when  he 

211 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

listens  to  my  interpretation ;   I,  when  I  devote 
myself  to  the  task. 

This  goal :  —  Our  individual  experienc*e  of 
our  successful  comparisons  of  our  own  id^as 
shows  us  wherein  it  consists,  and  that  it  is  no 
goal  which  an  abstract  conception  can  define  in 
terms  of  credit-values,  and  that  it  is  also  no 
goal  which  a  possible  perception  can  render  to 
me  in  the  cash  of  any  set  of  sensory  data.     Yet 
it  is  a  goal  which  each  of  us  can  accept  as  his 
own.     I  can  at  present  aim  to  approach  that 
goal  through  plans,  through  hypotheses  regard- 
ing you  which  can  be  inductively  tested.   /l  can 
view  that  goal  as  a  common  future  event. 
We  can  agree  upon  that  goal.     And  herewith 
I  interpret  not  only  you  as  the  being  whom 
I  am  to  interpret,  but  also  myself  as  in  ideal 
the  interpreter  who  aims  to  approach  the  vi- 
sion of  the  unity  of  precisely  this  community. 
And  you,  and  my  other  neighbor  to  whom  I 
address  my  interpretation,  can  also  interpret 
yourselves  accordingly! 

The  conditions  of  the  definition  of  our  com- 
munity will  thus  be  perfectly  satisfied.     We 

212 


THE    WILL   TO   INTERPRET 

shall  be  many  selves  with  a  common  ideal 
future  event  at  which  we  aim.  Without  es- 
sentially altering  the  nature  of  our  community, 
our  respective  oflSces  can  be,  at  our  pleasure, 
interchanged.,.  You,  or  my  other  neighbor,  can 
at  any  moment  assume  the  function  of  inter- 
preter ;  while  I  can  pass  to  a  new  position  in 
the  new  community.  And  yet,  we  three  shall 
constitute  as  clearly  as  before  a  Community  of 
Interpretation.  The  new  community  will  be 
in  a  perfectly  definite  relation  to  the  former 
one;  and  may  grow  out  of  it  by  a  process 
as  definite  as  is  every  form  of  conscious 
interpretation. 

Thus  there  can  arise,  in  our  community, 
no  problem  regarding  the  one  and  the  many, 
the  quest  and  the  goal,  the  individual  who 
approaches  the  goal  by  one  path  or  by  another, 
-Jnp  question  to  which  the  definition  of  the 
community  of  interpretation  will  not  at  once 
furnish  a  perfectly  precise  answer; 
\  Such  an  answer  will  be  based  upon  the 
perfectly  fundamental  triadic  relation  which  . 
is  essential  to  every  process  of  interpretation  J  \ 

213 


i 


\ 


TT 


s .-. 


-THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

whether  such  process  takes  place  within  the 
inner  life  of  an  individual  human  being,  or 
goes  on  in  the  world  of  ordinary  social  inter- 
course. 

XI 

Thus,  then,  if  I  assume  for  the  moment  the 
role  of  an  interpreter,  I  can  define  my  office, 
my  Community  of  Interpretation,  and  my 
place  in  that  community. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  sort  of  truth 
which,  as  interpreter,  I  seek,  cannot  be  stated 
in  terms  as  simple  as  those  with  which  the 
current  pragmatism  is  satisfied.     My  inter- 
pretation, if  I  offer  to  our  common  neighbor 
any  interpretation  of  your  mind,  will  of  course 
be  an  idea  of  my  own,  —  namely,  precisely 
that  "third"  idea  which  I  contribute  to  our 
community  as  my  interpretation  of  you.     And 
no  doubt  I  shall  desire  to  make  as  sure  as  I 
can  that  this  idea  of  mine  "works."     But  no 
data  of  my  individual  perception  can  ever 
present  to  me  the  "workings"  which  I  seek. 
For   I   want  my  interpretation   of  you   to 

214 


THE    WILL    TO    INTERPRET 

our  neighbor  to  be  such  as  you  would  accept 
and  also  such  as  our  neighbor  would  compre- 
hend, were  each  of  us  already  in  the  position 
of  the  ideal  observer  from  above,  whose  vision 
of  the  luminous  unity  of  my  interpretation 
and  its  goal  I  am  trying  to  imitate  whenever 
I  try  to  interpret  your  mind. 

Thus,  from  the  outset,  the  idea  which  I 
offer  as  my  interpretation  of  your  mind,  is 
offered  not  for  the  sake  of,  or  in  the  pursuit 
of,  any  individual  or  private  perception  of  my 
own,  either  present  or  expected  or  possible. 
I  am  not  looking  for  workings  that  could  con- 
ceivably be  rendered  in  my  perceptual  terms. 
J  ,am  ideally  aiming  at  an  ideal  event,  —  the 
spiritual  unity  of  our  community.  I  can  de- 
fine that  unity  in  perfectly  empirical  terms; 
because  I  have  compared  pairs  of  ideas  which 
were  my  own,  and  have  discovered  their 
mediating  third  idea.  But  I  do  not  expect 
to  perceive  that  unity  as  any  occurrence  in 
my  own  individual  life,  or  as  any  working  of 
one  of  my  own  personal  ideas.  Qa  brief,  I 
have  to  define  the  truth  of  my  interpretation 

215 


1 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

of  you  in  terms  of  what  the  ideal  observer  of 
all  of  us  would  view  as  the  unity  which  he 
observed.     This  truth  cannot  be  defined  in 
merely  pragmatic  termsTT 
Lis  a  conmiunity  thus  defined,  the  interpreter 
obviously    assumes,    in    a    highly    significant 
sense,  the  chief  place.     For  the  community 
is  one  of  interpretation.     Its  goal  is  the  ideal 
'unity  of  insight  which  the  interpreter  would 
possess  were  these  who  are  now  his  neighbors 
transformed  into  ideas  of  his  own  which  he 
compared^.' that  is,  were  they  ideas  between 
which    his    own    interpretation    successfully 
-mediated.   'J[he  interpreter  appears,  then,  as 
the  one  of  the  three  who  is  most  of  all  the 
spirit  of  the  community,  dominating  the  ideal 
relations  of  all  three  members. ' 

But  the  one  who  is,  in  ideal,  this  chief,  is 
so  because  he  is  first  of  all  servant.  His  oflSce 
it  is  to  conform  to  the  mind  which  he  inter- 
prets, and  to  the  comprehension  of  the  mind 
to  which  he  addresses  his  interpretation. 
And  his  ow^n  ideas  can  "work"  only  if  his 
self-surrender,   and   his   conformity   to   ideas 

216 


THE    WILL   TO   INTERPRET 


which  are  not  his  own,  is  actually  a  successful 
conformity;  and  only  if  his  approach  to  a 
goal  which,  as  member  of  a  human  community 
of  interpretation,  he  can  never  reach,  is  a  real 
approach. 

XII 

Such  are  the  relationships  which  constitute 
a  Community  of  Interpretation.  I  beg  you 
to  observe,  as  we  close,^e  etliical  and  reli- 
gious significance  which  the  structure  of  such 
a  community  makes  possible77  In  case  our 
interpretations  actually  approach  success,  a 
community  of  interpretation  possesses  such 
ethical  and  religious  significance,  with  increas- 
ing definiteness  and  beauty  as  the  evolution 
of  such  a  community  passes  from  simpler  to 
higher  stages. 

I^pon  interpretation,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  every  ideal  good  that  we  mortals  win 
together,  under  our  human  social  conditions, 
depends.  Whatever  else  men  need,  they  need 
their  communities  of  interpretationJ 

It  is  indeed   true  that  such  communities 

217 


^^=''*'^'^^^'^'^^'''-*-=^'ii^^ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

can  exist,  at  any  time,  in  the  most  various 
grades  of  development,  of  self-consciousness, 
and  of  ideality.  The  communities  of  inter- 
pretation which  exist  in  the  market-places  of 
the  present  social  world,  or  that  lie  at  the 
basis  of  the  diplomatic  intercourse  of  modern 
^  nations,  are  communities  whose  ideal  goal  is 
^  seldom  present  to  the  minds  of  their  mem- 
bers ;  and  it  is  not  love  which  often  seems  to 
be  their  consciously  ruling  motive. 

Yet,  on  the  whole,  it  is  not  perception,  and 
it  is  not  conception ;  while  it  certainly  is 
interpretation  which  is  the  great  humanizing 
factor  in  our  cognitive  processes  and  which 
makes  the  purest  forms  ofijove  for  communi- 
ties possible.  '  Loyalty  to  a  community  of 
^  interpretation  enters  into  all  the  other  forms 
of  true  loyalt^  No  one  who  loves  mankind 
can  find  a  worthier  and  more  significant  way 
to  express  his  love  than  by  increasing  and  ex- 
pressing among  men  the  Will  to  Interpret. 
This  will  inspires  every  student  of  the  humani- 
ties ;  and  is  present  wherever  charity  enters 
into  life.     When  Christianity  teaches  us  to 

218 


THE    WILL   TO. INTERPRET 
hope  for  the  community  of  all  mankind,  we 
can  readily  .sec  thai  thc/oloved  Community 
whatever  else  it-is^jj^be,  when  it  comes,  a 
Comniunitj-trf4i|tcrpretation.     When  we  con- 
.sider  the  ideal  form  and  the  goal  of  such  a 
community,  we  sec  that  i;,  no  other  form,  and 
witli  no  other  ideal,  can  we  better  express  the 
constitution  of  the  ideal  Church,  be  that  con- 
cei    d  as   the   Church   on   earth,  or  as  the 
Ch   rch   triumphant   in  «ome  ideal  realm  of 
superhuman  and  all  sowing  insight,  where  I 
shall  know  even   as  l[  am   known. 

And,  if,_i,Udeal^wc^aim^to_conceive  the      , 

dmne_naturcaiow  better_.can   we'^^i^^e     / 

fili£ILilLikcJgrm  oLthe -JZammunity  of    ''^ 

^^^^?^^*i^?l^^J^J20vc.aIlJn  tl^T^^^^T^ 

Bl2}}l2n^I£!^r^hoJraorprots  all  to  all,'^ 
eacjnnd ivid ual  tc^tijejvoiH^;^^^ 

spints_ta.x;adj_iiulm(iudr        ~~ ■ 

In  such  an  interpreter,  and  in  his  community 

1- problem  of  the  One  and  the  Many  would' 
^nd  itsjdcally  co„,plote  expression  and  solu- 

I  ;on      The  abstract  co,/ccptions  and  the  mys- 

t-1  mtmtions  would  ^.t  once  transcended. 

•  ^  219 


THE  PROBLEM  QF  CHRISTIANITY 

and   illuinined,    and   ^  rctahicd^nd   kept 

^  ^lea£juKl_dJsUi^ 

^^^c  who,  as  interpreter,  was  at  onro  .^orynnf 
tojjl  an(ichiclamQng_all^_^^^ 
th rough jdl^yljn_liis  interpretations,  rc^^^ 
ing3ndJoviii£_thc  will  of.  the  least  of  these 
hjs  bretliren.    In  him  the  Community,  the  In- 


/ 


THE   WILL   TO  INTEItPllET 
I       commurutj   is   awakene.1,  -  then  indeed  this 
^^^^r^t^^l^^^S^l:^^  •  ^al,  the  meIni7rg-or 


\ 


dividual,  and  the  Absolute  would  be  conipl^teiy 
expressed^reconciled ,  and  disthiguished.  "^ 

'  This,  to  be  sure,  is,  at  this  point  of  our 
/discussion,  still  merely  the  expression  of  an 
ideal,  and  not  the  assertion  of  a  metaphysical 
proposition.  Butjn  the  Will  to  Interpret, 
jj|^2jJivinc_im^^  seem   to   bejn 

closest   touch   with   each   other.     ~~  ' 

The  mere  form  of  interpretation  may  be 
indeed  momentarily  misused  for  whatever 
purpose  of  passing  human  folly  you  will. 
Bu^  if    the    idgjU    of    interpretation    is _first 

^^^^^rprcta^^  as  inclusive  of  all 

individuals;    andjis  unified  by  the^^moiT' 
hope  of  the  far-off  ev^jit  oLcompi^^ 
..^understandiiuu..-4md^  finally,  if  lo^^Tfor^h"^ 

220 


Saini^  Godjlie  Interpreter'. 

^^MereFy  to  dc^fine.such  idealslTiiot  to  solve 
the  problems  of  /letaphysics.  I3ut  it  is  to 
remove  many  obstacles  from  the  path  that 
leads  towards  iAsight. 

These    icieal,.      however,    are    grasped    and 
loved  whenevc    one  first  learns  fully  to  com- 
prehend    what    Paul    meant  when    he    said  • 
"Wherefore    letjiim    ilHiL.sj.caix.lL^dlJ, 
tongues  pray  that  nrTnay  jnterj.r.^tj^     This 
word  is  but  a  small  i)art  of  Paul's  advice 
But  m  germ  it  contains  the  whole  meaning 
of  the  office,  both  of  philosophy  and  of  reli- 
gion. 


221 


* 

«» 


.»> 


X 

THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 


LECTUIIK   XIII 

THE  WOULD  OF  IN'lKni'ltKXftflON 
TN  the  dosing  Joclurc  of  a  course  dclivcml 
a  few  years  since,  on    l),e  "J»r(,I,ieni  of 
Age,  Growth,  and  DealJi,"  Professor  Charles 
S.  Minot,  of  Harvard  University,  in  sununa- 
nzing    the    results  of  lu's  studies,  used  these 
words :  "I  do  not  wisli  to  close  without  a  few 
words  of  warning  exjjlanation.     For  the  views 
which   I  have  presented   before  you   in   this 
scries  of  lectures,  I  personally  am  chiefly  re- 
sponsible.    Science  consists  in  the  discoveries 
made    by    individuals,    afterwards   confirmed 
and  correlated  by  others,  so  that  they  lose 
their  personal  character.     You  ought  to  know 
that  the  interpretations  which  I  have  offered 
you   are  still   largely   in   the  personal   stage.  ' 
Whether  my-  colleagues  will  think  that  the 
body  of  conceptions  which  I  have  presented 
arc  fully  justified  or  not.  I  cannot  venture  to 
say." 

This  was  the  word  of  a  distinguished  leader 

VOL.  II  — Q  225 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


u^-" 


of-  research  in  Comparative  Anatomy.  It 
expressed,  in  passing,  a  view  about  the  general 
character  of  scientific  method  which  the 
same  author,  not  very  long  afterwards,  set 
forth  at  much  greater  length  in  a  lecture 
before  his  own  Section  at  a  meeting  of  the 
American  Association  for  the  Advancement 
of  Science.  In  that  lecture  **  On  the  Method 
of  Science"  Professor  Minot  carefully— ex-_.. 
[)ounded,  and  very  extensively  illustrated,^the-> 
jthesis  that,  while  na_tui:al  science  is  dependent 
upolTthe- experiences  of  indi vidualsjox. gyery^ 
one  of  its  advances  in  the  knowledge  oL  the 
facts  of  jiaJiSc,  nqjixperlciice^  individual 
man  can  count  as  a  scientific  discovery  until. 
liVjias  been  siifficijiiiLly  rnn  firmed- l)y,_other 

ind by iudcpjeudent —observers.     IV«4«ssnr^ 

[inot  speaks  of  this  confirmaiioiiMby^idlow 
/lp^'>lj/orkerrarnnI5titunng  a  sort  of  **  depersonal- 
izing 7_fil_lhe  discqyenes  of  each  individual 
oba^ryer. 

The  thesis  here  in  question  is  familiar.  I 
cite  Professor  Minot's  words,  not  as  if  he  him- 
self thought  them  at  all  novel,  but  merely  iu 

226 


\ 


THE  WORLD   OF  INTERPRETATION 

order  to  bring  at  the  moment  as  directly  as 
possible  to  your  minds  what  we  all  know  to 
be  an  essential  feature  of  the  methods  of 
natural  science. 


V** 


For  my  own  part,  I  should  not  say,  as  Dr. 
Minot  does,  that  the  discoveries  of  the  in- 
dividual worker  in  a  natural  science  "lose  their 
personal  character"  by  receiving  the  confirma- 
tion which  makes  them  possessions  of  science. 
I  think  that  I  understand  what  my  colleague 
means  by  calling  this  process  a  "depersonaliz- 
ing" of  the  individual's  contributions  to  scien- 
tific  work.     But   I   should   myself  prefer  to 
express  this  well-known  maxim  of  method  by 
saying    that    the    individual    observer's    dis- 
coveries  have   first  to  be  interpreted  to  the 
scientific  community,  and  then  substantiated 
by  the  further  experience  of  that  community, 
before   they   belong  to  the  science.     In  still 
other  words,  the  work  of  science  is  what,  in 
t  he  athletic  phrase,  is  called  team-work.     The 
pirit  of  science Js  one  of  loyalty  to  a  Com- 

227 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

munity  of  Interpretation.  The  term  Com- 
munity of  Interpretation  I  here  use  in  the 
technical  sense  defined  in  the  foregoing  lecture. 

But  however  you  choose  to  formulate  the 
rule,  the  lesson  of  which  it  reminds  us  is  one 
which  concerns  philosophers  quite  as  much  as 
it  does  the  students  of  nature.  Let  us  attempt 
to  read  this  lesson,  and  to  generahze  it.  We 
shall  find  it  to  be  a  lesson  in  metaphysics. 

Our  knowledge  of  nature  depends  upon 
experience.  An  experience,  in  order  to  be 
useful  for  the  purposes  of  physical  science, 
must  involve  the  testing,  or  at  all  events  the 
present  success,  of  an  idea.  In  this  expe- 
rience percepts  and  concepts  must  be  brought 
into  synthesis.  Some  idea  about  nature,  as 
the  pragmatists  tell  us,  must  be  found  to 
'*  work,"  at  least  in  the  one  case  which  is  first 
in  question  when  a  new  natural  fact  is  found. 
A  scientific  discovery  consists  in  the  obser- 
vation of  such  a  "working."  And  so  far  all 
who  have  learned  how  the  study  of  the  phys- 
ical world  is  carried  on,  will  agree  regarding 
the  bases  of  scientific  knowledge. 

228 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 


n 

Discoveries,  however,  are  made  by  indi- 
viduals. The  individual  discoverer,  then,  must 
be  the  one  who  first  finds  that,  at  a  certain 
moment,  and  for  him  personally,  concepts 
and  percepts  meet  thus  and  thus.  Some 
question  of  his  is  answered,  and,  in  general, 
some  hypothesis  of  his  is  for  the  moment 
verified.  The  individual  observer  finds  that 
"cash"  is  rendered  to  correspond  to  certain 
"credit- values"  which  he  has  previously 
possessed    only    in    conceptual    form.     Some 

• 

mterest  of  his  in  the  search  for  percepts  is, 
at  least  momentarily,  fulfilled.  Unless  at 
least  so  much  takes  place  in  the  fife  of  some- 
body, science  is  not  enriched  by  a  new  dis- 
covery. 

Such,  then,  are  the  necessary  conditions 
which  must  be  met  if  a  scientific  advance  is 
to  take  place.  But  are  these  conditions 
sufficient?  Does  every  case  wherein  the  in- 
dividual finds  novel  "cash  payment"  rendered 
for  some  of  his  own  "credit-values,"  and  new 

229 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 


perceptual  answers  given  to  his  conceptual 
questions,  and  "workings"  crowning  with  at 
least  momentary  success  an  idea  of  his  own 
about  nature,  —  an  idea  which  has  heretofore 
** worked"  for  no  other  man,  —  does  every 
such  case  involve  a  genuine  scientific  dis- 
covery ?  Can  the  individual  simply  turn 
over  to  his  science  the  "cash"  which  his 
percepts  have  now  rendered  ?  Can  he  ad- 
dress all  who  are  concerned  thus?  —  "Lo,  I 
have  indeed  found  a  new  scientific  fact. 
Scientific  facts  are  facts  of  experience.  I 
have  had  an  experience.  True  ideas  are 
ideas  which  *work.'  Here  is  an  idea  of  mine; 
and  this  time  it  'works,'  for  I  have  seen  its 
*  working.'  You  want  in  science,  not  mere 
concepts,  but  percepts.  I  have  a  percept. 
You  want,  not  mere  credit,  but  cash.  I  have 
the  cash ;  and  here  it  is." 

Is  this  the  sole  way  in  which  the  individual 
wins  access  to  new  scientific  facts  ?  And  is 
this  the  spirit  in  which  the  trained  scientific 
observer  —  for  instance,  the  colleague  whom 
I  have  just  cited  —  reports  his  discoveries  ? 

230 


-9 


No,  these  conditions  of  a  scientific  dis- 
covery are  necessary,  but  not  suflScient. 
The  individual  has  made  his  discovery;  but 
it  is  a  scientific  discovery  only  in  case  it  can 
become,  through  further  confirmation,  the 
property  and  the  experience  of  the  community 
of  scientific  observers.  The  process  whereby 
the  transition  is  made  from  the  individual 
observation  to  the  needed  confirmation  is 
one  whose  technical  details,  as  they  appear 
in  the  fife  of  any  one  special  science,  interest 
us  here  not  at  all.  But  what  does  interest 
us,  first  of  all,  is  the  fact  that  this  confirma- 
tion always  involves  a  typical  instance,  or  a 
series  of  instances,  of  Peirce's  cognitive  pro- 
cess called  interpretation.  What  further  con- 
cerns us  is  that  this  interpretation  is  guided  by 
principles  which  are,  in  their  bearings,  both 
very  general  and  highly  metaphysical.  One 
needs  no  other  principles  than  these  for  dealing 
with  all  the  central  problems  of  philosophy. 

I  am  far  from  accusing  my  colleague.  Pro- 
fessor Minot,  of  any  conscious  intention  to 
express  an  opinion  about  a  problem  of  meta- 

231 


THE   PROBLEM  OF   CHRISTIANITY 

physics  when  he  uttered  his  loyal  word  of  warn- 
ing regarding  his  own  scientific  discoveries. 
But  none  the  less,  this  appeal  to  the  scientific 
community  impHes  a  belief  that  there  is  such 
a  community.  This  belief  is  due  not  to  per- 
ception or  to  conception  alone.  This  behef  in 
the  reality  of  the  scientific  community  is  itself 
no  belief  in  a  fact  which  is  open  to  the  scientific 
observations  of  any  individual.  No  observer 
of  nature  has  ever  discovered,  by  the  methods 
used  in  his  or  in  any  natural  science,  that  there 
exists  any  such  community.  The  existence  of 
the  community  of  scientific  observers  is  known 
through  interpretation.  This  interpretation 
expresses  essentially  social  motives,  as  well  as 
profoundly  ethical  motives.  And  this  inter- 
pretation is  also  of  a  type  which  we  are  obhged 
to  use  in  deaUng  with  the  whole  universe. 


Ill 

Let  me  illustrate  the  thesis  which  I  have 
just  expressed.  Let  us  first  consider  why  the 
individual  observer  must  await  the  confirma- 
tion of  others  before  his  discovery  can  get  its 

232 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPilETATION 


place  as  a  contribution  to  a  physical  science. 
Let  us  use  our  foregoing  study  of  the  cog- 
nitive process  of  interpretation  as  a  further 
aid  towards  the  understanding  of  the  relations 
between  an  individual  scientific  man  and  the 
work  of  the  natural  science  to  which  he  may 
contribute. 

There  is  a  well-known  maxim  of  common 
sense  which  tells  us  that  no  man  should  be 
judge  in  his  own  case.  The  patient  does  ill' 
who  attempts  to  be  his  own  physician.  The 
litigant,  even  if  he  happens  to  be  a  lawyer, 
needs  somebody  besides  himself  as  his  counsel. 
The  judge  on  the  bench  may  not  undertake 
to  try  a  suit  in  which  he  is  plaintiff  or  defend- 
ant. Even  a  great  statesman  needs  aid 
when  his  own  fitness  for  office  is  in  question. 
The  artist,  however  original,  may  be  an  un- 
trustworthy critic  of  his  own  genius. 

This  maxim  of  common  sense,  at  least  in  its 
application  to  patients,  to  Htigants,  to  office- 
seekers,  or  to  artists,  seems  to  be  somewhat 
remote  from  the  maxim  of  scientific  method 
which  Professor  Minot  formulated.     And  vet, 

233 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

■ 
in  both  maxims,  essentially  the  same  prin- 
ciple is  in   question.     Why  is   a   man  in  so 
many  cases  so  poor  a  judge  of  his  own  case  ? 
Why  ought  not  the  most  expert  of  judges  to 
undertake  to  decide  a  case  in  which  he  is 
plaintiff  or  defendant  ?     W^hy  is  it,  in  general, 
true,  as  they  say,  that  the  man  who  is  his 
own  lawyer  has  a  fool  for  a  cHent  ?     Why  is 
every  one  of  us  disqualified  from  self-estimate 
in  respect  of  some  of  the  matters  which  per- 
sonally concern  us  most  of  all  ? 

IV 

The  general  answers  to  these  questions  are 
easy.  A  man's  own  case  is  usually  not  merely 
his  own.  it  also  concerns  some  social  order 
to  which  he  belongs.  The  litigant  stands  in 
presence,  not  merely  of  his  own  rights  and 
wrongs,  but  of  the  whole  social  will.  The 
decision  of  his  case  will  affect  many  besides 
himself,  and  sometimes  might  save  or  wreck 
a  nation.  The  patient's  illness  is  not  merely 
a  medical  phenomenon,  and  not  merely  an 
individual  misfortune,  but  also  is  an  event 

234 


THE   WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 
of  social  moment.     His  family,  and  perhaps 
his  country,  may  be  affected  by  what  is  done 
with   this   single   case.     Napoleon's   state   of 
health,  during  the  later  years  of  his  power,  •^^/ 
probably  influenced  the  course  of  all  future       '^^ , 
European   history.     And    the   obscurest   vic- 
tim of  the  plague  may  prove  to  be  a  centre  of 
infection  for  a  whole  continent.     Hence,  when 
anybody  is  ill,  his  case  is  not  merely  his  own. 
When  a  man's  affairs  deeply  concern  other 
people  besides  himself,  the  only  way  to  deal 
justly  with  the  case  is  to  interpret  this  man's 
own  individual  views  and  interests  to  some 
fitting   representative   of   the   social   will,   in 
order  that  the  matter  may  be  arbitrated,  or 
in  order  that  the  wills  of  all  concerned  may 
be,  as  far  as  possible,  both  harmonized  and 
expressed.     A  Community   of  Interpretation 
must  exist  or  must  be  formed. 

The  sufferer  who  is  ill,  or  the  man  who  is 
haled  into  court,  needs,  then,  not  only  to  be 
an  object  of  perception  or  of  conception. 
It  IS  not  enough  to  wait  in  order  to  see  whether 
his  ideas  'Svork"  or  not.     What  is  needed  is 

235 


/ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  triadic^  process  of  mediating  between  his 
mind  and  some  other  mind,  between  his 
ideas  and  other  men's  ideas. 

And  no  interpreter  who  merely  blended 
with  the  mind  and  the  ideas  of  the  one  whom 
he  is  to  interpret,  or  with  the  interests  of 
those  whom  he  is  to  address,  could  do  the 
work.  The  distinction  of  the  persons,  or  of 
the  personal  functions  involved,  is  as  essential 
to  a  Community  of  Interpretation  as  is  the 
common  task  in  which  these  three  persons 
engage,  or  in  which  these  three  distinct  ideas 
or  personal  functions  cooperate. 

Now  it  is  indeed  perfectly  possible  for  a 
man  to  undertake  the  task  of  interpreting  his 
own  case.  There  are  instances  in  which  we 
all  of  us  wisely  attempt  some  form  of  self- 
interpretation.  There  are  callings,  such  as 
those  of  the  trained  administrators  and  of 
the  sea-captains,  in  which  it  becomes  a  regular 
part  of  a  man's  duty,  even  at  moments  when 
great  and  novel  emergencies  arise,  to  interpret 
his  own  duty  to  himself. 

In  a  previous  lecture,  we  have  seen  how 

236 


I 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

such  enterprises  of  self-interpretation  are 
actually  carried  out.  At  some  present  mo- 
ment, a  man  may  interpret  his  past  plans, 
his  habits,  his  resolutions,  his  ideals,  his 
obligations,  to  his  future  self,  and  thereupon 
may  give  commands  to  himself. 

The  psychology  of  such  processes  is  simply 
that    of    comparison,    when    comparison    is 
taken  in  Peirce's  sense,  as  a  triadic  mode  of 
cognition.     In    such    instances    a    man    dis- 
covers a  third  or  mediating  idea,   whereby 
two  of  his  own  distinct  ideas  are,  within  the 
hmits  of  his  individual  consciousness,  woven 
into  a  threefold  unity.      Now  that  this  can 
sometimes  be  accomphshed  with  success,  the 
sea-captain  —  who,  while  on  the  bridge,  faces 
a  great  emergency  and  consults  no  other  man, 
yet  gives  fitting  orders  and  succeeds  —  well 
illustrates.     The  captain's  task,  of  course,  con- 
cerns the  interests  of  a  social  order.     But  his 
training  has  prepared  him  to  unite  in  his  own 
person  certain  functions  of  a  community. 

From    one    essential    feature    of    his    self- 
imposed  task,  however,  the  man  who  acts 

237 


THE  PROBLEM  OF   CHRISTIANITY 

as  his  own  adviser  in  any  socially  significant 
situation,  cannot  be  relieved.  He  attempts, 
at  such  a  moment,  to  do  the  work  of  three 
men  at  once.  The  three  personal  functions 
which  must  be  brought  into  unity  if  the  work  |\ 
is  to  be  successfully  done,  remain  distinct. 
They  must  not  blend.  If  they  actually  blend, 
the  whole  affair  becomes  a  blind  product  of 
instinct  or  of  routine,  and  not  any  genuine 
self-direction  whatever.  As  a  fact,  there  are 
some  callings  which  train  a  man  for  such  a 
threefold  task.  There  are  some  situations 
in  life  wherein  any  mature  man  who  knows 
his  own  business  has  to  act  as  his  own  ad- 
viser. But  the  task  has  its  difficulty  deter- 
mined by  its  form.  An  individual  has,  in 
all  such  instances,  to  do  the  work  of  a  com- 
munity. 

Now  in  case  of  illness,  of  legal  peril,  or  of 
the  personal  estimate  to  which  the  artist  or 
the  statesman  is  subjected  by  the  social  will, 
experience  shows  that  a  man  is  seldom,  and, 
in  suflSciently  great  emergencies,  is  never  able 
to  act  with  success  as  his  o^^n^^viser.     The 

238 


THE   WORLD   OF  INTERPRETATION 
reasons    for    this    sort    of    defect    are    two  : 
First,  the  question  at  issue  concerns  the  in- 
terests of  at  least  two  distinct  individuals; 
and  hence,  whether  the  patient  or  the  liti- 
gant, or  other  man  in  question  endeavors  to 
be  his  own  director  or  not,  the  task  is  essen- 
tially such  that  it  can  be  accomplished  only 
by  the  aid  of  an  interpreter.     For  just  be- 
cause more  than  one  individual  must  be  rightly 
treated,   there   exists   some   social    boundary 
which  must  be  crossed.     Therefore  neither  the 
"cash-values"  nor  the  ''credit-values"  of  in- 
dividual ideas  are  mainly  in  question.     The 
"exchange-values"  of  two   distinct   forms   of 
ideal  coinage  are  to  be  considered.     And  so  the 
adjustment  required  has  to  be  triadic  in  its  in- 
most form.     But  secondly,  while  this  process  of 
mterpretation,  this  crossing  of  our  ideal  boun- 
dary, can  indeed  be  undertaken  within  the 
limits  of  an  individual  man's  consciousness,  as 
It  is  undertaken  whenever  we  compare  two 
distinct  ideas  of  our  own,  —  experience  shows 
that  the  effort  to  fill  at  once  the  functions  of 
three  distinct  persons  does  not  succeed  with 

239 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

the  patients  and  with  the  Htigants,  although 
analogous  threefold  functions  may  succeed 
in  case  of  the  sea-captains  and  the  great  ad- 
ministrators. 


Let  us  return  to  the  case  of  the  scientific 
observer,  —  not  because  the  maxim  defined 
by  my  colleague  is  either  obscure  or  doubtful, 
but  because  the  underlying  principle  needs 
to  be  brought  clearly  to  our  consciousness. 

Common  sense  regards  the  physical  world  as 
a  realm  whose  objects  can  be  experienced  in 
common  by  many  observers.  We  have  not 
here  to  inquire  into  the  origin  of  this  special 
belief.  But  the  belief  can  be  readily  illus- 
trated  by  the  way  in  which  two  men  who 
row  in  the  same  boat  regard  the  boat  and  the 
oars  which  they  see  and  touch,  and  the  water 
over  which  they  fly. 

Each  man  views  the  boat  and  the  oars  and 
the  water  as  objects  w^hich  he  experiences  for 
himself.  At  the  same  time,  each  of  the  two 
men   believes   that   both  of   them  are  expe- 

240 


THE   WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

riencing,  while  they  row  together,  the  same 
external  facts,  —  the  same  boat,  the  sams  oars, 
the  same  water. 

It  is  important  for  our  purposes  to  notice 
that,  while  each  individual,  as  he  pulls  his 
oar,  verifies  some  of  his  own  ideas,  and  finds 
them  *' working"  in  his  own  individual  ex- 
perience, neither  of  them  individually  verifies 
the   "workings"   of   the   other   man's   ideas. 
Consequently,  when  each  man  believes  that 
the  boat  in  which  he  observes  himself  to  be 
rowing  is  the  same  boat  as  the  one  which  the 
other  man  also  finds  as  an  object  in  his  own 
experience,  —  this  belief,  as  each  of  the  men 
possesses  it,  is  not  a  perception,  and  is  not  veri-, 
fied  by  the  individual  "workings"  of  the  ideas 
of  either  of  the  men.  ^"^ 

This  belief  in  the  common  object  is,  for 
each  of  the  men,  an  interpretation,  which  he 
may  address  to  the  other  man,  or  may  regard 
the  other  as  in  turn  addressing  to  him. 

The  cognitive  process  involved  is  through 
and  through  triadic.  ^ — -^ ' 

The    boat    which    each    man    finds,    sees, 


I 


VOL.  II R 


241 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

touches,  and  feels  himself  pull,  appears  to 
him  as  verifying  his  own  ideas.  The  com- 
mon boat,  the  boat  which  each  man  regards 
as  an  object  not  only  for  his  own,  but  also  for 
his  neighbor's  experience,  is  essentially  an 
object  of  interpretation. 

The  real  boat  may  indeed  actually  be  what 
each  of  the  two  men  takes  it  to  be;  and  it 
may  be  the  same  boat  as  that  boat  which 
each  man  verifies  in  his  own  experience.  But 
if  this  is  the  case,  and  if  the  boat  is  really  a 
common  object  of  experience  for  both  the 
oarsmen,  theji_the__xiommunity  of  interpreta- 
tion into  which  the  two  men  enter  whenever 
they  talk  about  their  boat__Qr_^hout  their 
rowing,  is  a  community  which  even  now  views 
both  itself  and  its  boat  as  it  would  view  both 
of  them  in  case  its  goal  were  actually  attained, 
and  in  case  the  interpretation  had  been  trans- 
formed into  a  perfectly  clear  vision  of  a  com- 
parison of  ideas. 

In  any  case,  however,  it  is  useless  to  attempt 
to  express  the  community  of  experience  which 
the   two    oarsmen    possess   in    terms   of    the 

242 


THE   WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

separate  "workings"  of  the  ideas  of  either 
of  them  or  of  both,  taken  as  mutually  de- 
tached individuals. 

Each  rower^verifies  his  own  idea  of  the  boat^ 


Neither  of  them,  as  anln^nHaualTverifies  the 
other's  idea  of  this  boat.  Each  of  them,  as 
interpreter,  either  of  himself  or  of  the  other 
man,  beheves  that  their  two  individual  ex- 
periences have  a  common  object.  Neither 
can  (merely  as  this  individual)  verify  this 
idea.  Neither  could,  as  an  individual,  ever 
verify  his  belief  in  the  interpretation,  even 
although  they  two  should  row  in  the  same 
boat  together  until  doomsday. 

If  the  common  interpretation  is  true,  then 
the  two  oarsmen  actually  form  a  community 
of  mterpretation,  and  are  even  now  believing 
what  would  be  seen  to  be  true  if,  and  only  if, 
this  community  of  interpretation  were  actually 
to  reach  its  goal. 

Pragmatism,  whose  ideas,  like  those  of  the 
bewitched  Galatians,  are  fain  to  be  saved  solely 
by  their  own  "works,"  is,  as  I  believe,  quite 
unable  to  define  in  its  own  dyadic  terms,  the 

243 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

essentially  spiritual  sense  in  which  any  in- 
terpretation can  be  true,  and  the  sense  in 
which  any  community  of  interpretation  could 
reach  its  goal.  Nothing,  however,  is  better 
known  to  us,  or  is  more  simply  empirical, 
than  is  the  reaching  of  such  a  limited  but 
determinate  goal  of  interpretation,  when- 
ever we  ourselves  compare  two  distinct  ideas 
of  our  own,  and  survey  with  clearness  the 
union  of  the  mediating  or  third  idea  with 
those  whose  contrasts  it  interprets.  The  oars- 
men who  not  only  row  in  the  same  boat,  but 
who  are  able  to  talk  over  together  their  boat 
and  their  rowing,  interpret  their  united  life 
and  work  as  such  a  real  community  of  inter- 
pretation. 

They  constantly  interpret  themselves  as 
the  members,  and  their  boat  as  the  empirical 
object  of  such  a  community.  And  they  con- 
stantly define  what  could  be  actually  verified 
only  if  the  goal  of  the  community  were 
reached.  By  merely  rowing  they  will  indeed 
never  reach  it.  But  does  the  real  world  any- 
where or  anyhow  contain  the  actual  winning 

244 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

of  the  goal  by  the  community  ?  If  not,  then 
the  ideas  of  the  interpreters  are  actually  and 
always  quite  unverifiable.  Yet  their  com- 
munity, by  hypothesis,  is  real.  But  if  the 
real  world  contains  the  actual  winning  of  the 
goal  by  the  community,  then  the  verifying 
experience  is  not  definable  in  the  terms  which 
pragmatism  uses. 

For  such  a  goal  is  essentially  the  experience 
of  a  community;  and  the  success,  —  the 
salvation,  —  the  final  truth  of  each  idea,  or 
of  each  individual  person,  that  enters  into 
this  community,  is  due  (when  the  goal  is 
reached)  neither  to  its  "works"  nor  to  its 
workings,  but  to  its  essentially  spiritual  unity 
in  and  with  the  community. 


i% 


VI 

The  case  of  the  two  men  rowing  together 
in  the  same  boat  is  a  case  in  which  common 
sense  raises  no  question  regarding  the  physical 
reality  of  the  boat.  Such  a  question  is,  for 
common  sense,  unnecessary,  simply  because 
the  interpretation  of  the  boat  as  the  common 

245 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

object  of  the  experience  of  both  the  rowers  is 
already  made  obvious  by  the  essentially  social 
nature  and  training  of  all  of  us.  Our  social 
consciousness  is,  psychologically  speaking,  the 
most  deeply  rooted  foundation  of  our  whole 
view  of  ourselves  and  of  the  world ;  and  we 
therefore  tend  from  the  outset  to  make  inter- 
pretation, rather  than  perception  or  concep- 
tion, our  ruling  cognitive  process  whenever 
explicitly  social  relations  are  concerned.  And 
so,  for  common  sense,  the  physical  objects, 
especially  when  they  appear  to  us  in  the  field 
of  our  experience  of  sight  and  of  touch,  are 
regarded  as  essentially  common  objects,  — 
the  same  for  all  men.  For  do  we  not  appear 
to  see  men  dealing  together  with  these  common 
objects  ? 

This  is  an  interpretation ;  but  it  is  an  early 
and  a  natural  interpretation.  So  long  as  we 
are  untrained  to  reflection,  we  remain  indeed 
unaware  of  the  principles  which  lie  at  the 
basis  of  such  common-sense  opinions  about 
natural  facts. 

These  principles  come  to  a  clearer  conscious- 

246 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 
ness  only  when  scientific  methods,  or  similarly 
critical  undertakings,  have  made  us  sceptical 
in  our  scrutiny  of  experience. 

Professor  Minot's  maxim  expresses  one 
result  of  such  criticism.  This  maxim  simply 
generalizes  the  view  which  the  two  men  row- 
ing in  the  boat  naturally  take. 

VII 

If  physical  objects  are  especially  to  be 
viewed  as  objects  which  are  or  which  can 
become  common  objects  of  experience  for 
various  men,  then  whoever  says,  '*I  have 
discovered  a  physical  fact,"  is  not  merely 
reporting  the  workings  of  his  own  individual 
ideas.  He  is  interpreting.  He  is  therefore 
appealing  to  a  community  of  interpretation. 

If  he  has  found  a  really  novel  object  in  his 
own  individual  experience,  then  this  object 
has  not  already  won  its  place,  as  the  boat 
and  the  oars  and  the  water  have  long  since 
done,  among  the  recognized  objects  of  com- 
mon experience.  If  hereupon  the  discoverer 
persists,  as  an  individual,  in  interpreting  his 

247 


P 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

own  experience;  if  he  says,  with  direct  con- 
fidence, *' Since  my  ideas  here  work  in  this 
novel  way,  I  have  found  a  new  physical 
fact,"  — then  the  discoverer  is  attempting 
to  be  judge  in  his  own  cause.  His  perils  are, 
therefore,  quite  analogous  to  those  which  the 
patient  faces  who  attempts  to  be  his  own 
physician,  or  to  the  dangers  which  the  man 
encounters    who    enters    court    as    his    own 

counsel. 

The   source   and   the   limitations   of   these 
perils  we  now  know.     The  observer  of  a  new 
fact  may  justly  be,  at  least  for  the  time,  his 
own    interpreter,    in    case    his    training    has 
rightly  prepared  him  for  the  scientific  emer- 
gency of  a  notable  discovery  made    by  him 
while  he  is  working  alone.     For  in  such  a  case 
the  discoverer  has  already  become  expert  in 
the  arts  of  his  community.     Yet  always  the 
scientific   discoverer   is,   in   principle,  subject 
to   Professor   Minot's   maxim.     Isolated   ob- 
servations  of   individuals,   even   when   these 
individuals  are  of  the  highest  grade  of  expert- 
ness,    are    always    unsatisfactory.     And    the 

248 


THE   WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

acknowledged  facts  of  a  natural  science  are 
the  possessions  of  the  community. 

That  the  scientific  community  itself  exists, 
is  therefore  one  of  the  most  important  prin- 
ciples used  in  the  natural  sciences.  Often 
this  principle  is  more  or  less  subconscious. 
It  is  seldom  adequately  analyzed. 

vm 

Our   previous   study   has   prepared    us   to 
understand  the  constitution  of  the  scientific 
community  of  interpretation  more  precisely 
than  would  be  possible  without  such  a  basis 
as  we  now  possess.     The  scientific  community 
consists,  at  the  least,  of  the  original  discoverer, 
of  his  interpreter,  and  of  the  critical  worker 
who  tests  or  controls  the  discoverer's  observa- 
tions by  means  of  new  experiences  devised 
for  that  purpose. 

Usually,  of  course,  in  case  the  discovery  has 
attracted  much  attention,  the  critic  whose  con- 
trol  is  in  question  is  no  one  individual  man. 
For  then  the  work  of  testing  the  discovery 
is  done  by  a  large  body  of  individual  workers. 

249 


^ 


f 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

In  many  cases,  in  the  routine  work  of  the 
highly  developed  sciences,  the  interpreter's 
task  takes,  in  large  part,  the  form  of  sim- 
ply reporting  and  recording  the  discoverer's 
observations. 

But    Professor    Minot    calls    attention    to 
another    and  a  very  important  part  of  the 
office   of   mediating   between   the   discoverer 
and  his  community.     Professor  Minot  speaks 
of  the  way  in  which  scientific  discoveries  are 
*' correlated"  by  others  than  those  who  made 
them.     This  process  of  correlation   involves, 
upon  its  higher  levels,  elaborate  comparisons. 
How  complex   and  how   significant,   for  the 
advance  of  science,  this  aspect  of  the  pro- 
cess of  interpretation  may  be,  the  historical 
instance  of   Clerk  Maxwell's   theoretical   in- 
terpretation of  Faraday's  discoveries  in  Elec- 
tricity and  Magnetism  will  suggest  sufficiently 
for  our  present  purpose. 

As  for  the  work  of  criticism  and  of  control 
to  which  the  interpretation  leads,  it  is  not 
only  capable  of  infinite  complexity,  but  in- 
volves various  reversals  in  the  direction  of 

250 


{ 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

the  process  of  interpretation.  Criticism  and 
control  often  come  from  those  who,  as  in  the 
typical  case  of  the  discoveries  of  Darwin, 
address  the  discoverer,  and  arouse  him  to 
make  new  discoveries. 

But  however  complex  the  processes  which 
arise  in  the  course  of  such  undertakings,  the 
essential  structure  of  the  community  of  scien- 
tific interpretation  remains  definitely  the 
same.  The  existence  of  this  community  is 
presupposed  as  a  basis  of  every  scientific  in- 
quiry into  natural  facts.  And  the  type  of 
truth  which  is  sought  by  scientific  investi- 
gators is  one  which  indeed  includes,  but  which 
simply  cannot  be  reduced  to,  the  dyadic  type 
to  which  pragmatism  devotes  its  exclusive 
attention.  For  everybody  concerned,  while 
he  indeed  aims  to  have  his  own  ideas  "work," 
is  also  concerned  with  the  truth  of  his  inter- 
pretations, and  of  those  which  are  addressed 
to  him.  And  such  truth  can  be  fully  tested, 
under  our  human  conditions,  only  in  the  cases 
wherein,  for  the  interpretation  of  another 
human  individual's  mind,  the  comparison  of 

251 


•"I 
I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

distinct  ideas  is  substituted,  while  these  ideas 
fall  within  the  range  of  our  individual  in- 
sight. 

-  In  all  other  cases,  just  as  in  our  ordinary 
social  dealings  with  one  another,  we  aim  tow- 
ards the  goal  of  the  community  of  inter- 
pretation. Our  will  is  the  "will  to  interpret." 
We  do  not  reach  the  goal  in  any  one  moment, 
so  long  as  we  are  dealing  with  other  human 
beings.  Yet  we  interpret  the  goal.  For  the 
goal  of  the  community  is  always  precisely  that 
luminous  knowledge  which  we  do,  in  a  limited 
but  in  a  perfectly  definite  form,  possess, 
within  the  range  of  our  own  individual  life 
whenever  our  comparisons  of  distinct  ideas 
are  made  with  clearness. 

We  define  the  facts  of  the  common  social 
experience  in  terms  of  this  perfectly  concrete 
and  empirical  goal  of  the  scientific  community 
of  interpretation.  This  goal  is  a  certain 
type  of  spiritual  unity.  All  scientific  re- 
search depends  upon  loyalty  to  the  cause 
of  the  scientific  community  of  interpreta- 
tion. 

252 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

IX 

But    how  —  so    one     may    still     insist  - 
should  we  know  that  any  community  of  in- 
terpretation exists  ?  

This  question  brings  us  indeed  to  the  very 
centre  of  metaphysics.  From  this  point  out- 
wards we  can  survey  all  the  principal  prob- 
lems about  reality.  The  will  to  interpret, 
in  all  of  its  forms,  scientific  or  philosophical 
or  religious,  presupposes  that  somehow,  at 
some  time,  in  some  fitting  embodiment,  a 
community  of  interpretation  exists,  and  is 
in  process  of  aiming  towards  its  goal.  Any 
conversation  with  other  men,  any  process  of 
that  inner  conversation  whereof,  as  we  have 
seen,  our  individual  self-consciousness  con- 
sists, any  scientific  investigation,  is  carried 
on  under  the  influence  of  the  generally  sub- 
conscious belief  that  we  all  are  members  of 
a  community  of  interpretation.  When  such 
enterprises  are  at  once  serious  and  reasonable 
and  truth-loving,  the  general  form  of  any  such 
community,  as  we  have  already  observed,  is 

253 


1 


1*1, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


V 


that  of  the  ideal  Pauline  Church.  For  there 
is  the  member  whose  office  it  is  to  edify. 
There  is  the  brother  who  is  to  be  edified. 
And  there  is  the  spirit  of  the  community, 
who  is  in  one  aspect  the  interpreter,  and  in 
another  aspect  the  being  who  is  interpreted. 
Now  what  is  the  warrant  for  believing  in  the 
reality  of  such  a  community  ? 

For  a  general  answer  to  this  question  let 
us  hereupon  consult  the  philosophers.  The 
philosophers  differ  sadly  amongst  themselves. 
They  do  not  at  present  form  a  literal  human 
community  of  mutual  enlightenment  and  of 
growth  in  knowledge,  to  any  such  extent  as 
do  the  workers  in  the  field  of  any  one  of  the 
natural  sciences.  The  philosophers  are  thus 
far  individuals  rather  than  consciously  mem- 
bers one  of  another.  The  charity  of  mutual 
interpretation  is  ill  developed  amongst  them. 
They  frequently  speak  with  tongues  and  do 
not  edify.  And  they  are  especially  disposed 
to  contend  regarding  their  spiritual  gifts. 
We  cannot  expect  them,  then,  at  present  to 
agree  regarding  any  one  philosophical  opinion. 

254 


\ 


THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETATION 

Nevertheless,  if  we  consider  them  in  a  his- 
torical way,  there  is  one  feature  about  their 
work  to  which,  at  this  point,  I  need  to  call 
especial  attention. 

I  have  already  more  than  once  asserted 
that  the  principal  task  of  the  philosopher 
is  one,  not  of  perception,  not  of  conception, 
but  of  interpretation.  This  remark  refers 
in  the  first  place  to  the  oflRce  which  the  philoso- 
phers have  filled  in  the  history  of  culture. 


Common  opinion  classes  philosophy  among*^ 
the  humanities.  It  ought  so  to  be  classed. 
Philosophers  have  actually  devoted  themselves, 
in  the  main,  neither  to  perceiving  the  world, 
nor  to  spinning  webs  of  conceptual  theory, 
but  to  interpreting  the  meaning  of  the  civili- 
zations which  they  have  represented,  and  to 
attempting  the  interpretation  of  whatever 
minds  in  the  universe,  human  or  divine,  they 
believed  to  be  real.  That  the  philosophers 
are  neither  the  only  interpreters,  nor  the 
chiefs  among  those  who  interpret,  we  now  well 

255 


1 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

know.  The  artists,  the  leaders  of  men,  and 
all  the  students  of  the  humanities,  make 
interpretation  their  business ;  and  the  triadic 
cognitive^ function,  as  the  last  lecture  showed, 
has  its  applications  in  all  the  realms  of  knowl- 
edge. But  in  any  case  the  philosopher's 
ideals  are  those  of  an  interpreter.  He  ad- 
dresses one  mind  and  interprets  another. 
The  unity  which  he  seeks  is  that  which  is 
characteristic  of  a  community  of  interpre- 
tation. 

The  historical  proofs  of  this  thesis  are  mani- 
fold. A  correct  summary  of  their  meaning 
appears  in  the  common  opinion  which  classes 
philosophy  amongst  the  humanities.  This 
classification  is  a  perfectly  just  one.  The 
humanities  are  busied  with  interpretations. 
Individual  illustrations  of  the  historical  office 
of  philosophy  could  be  furnished  by  consider- 
ing with  especial  care  precisely  those  his- 
torical instances  which  the  philosophers  fur- 
i^ish  who,  like  Plato  or  like  Bergson,  have 
most  of  all  devoted  their  efforts  to  empha- 
sizing as  much  as  possible  one  of  the  other 

256 


THE    WORLD    OF   INTERPRETATION 

cognitive  processes,  instead  of  interpretation. 
For  the  more  exclusively  such  a  philosopher 
lays  stress  upon  perception  alone,  or  con- 
ception alone,  the  better  does  he  illustrate 
our  historical  thesis. 

Plato  lays  stress  upon  conception  as  fur- 
nishing our  principal  access  to  reality.  Berg- 
son has  eloquently  maintained  the  thesis 
that  pure  perception  brings  us  in  contact  with 
the  real.  Yet  each  of  these  philosophers  ac- 
tually offers  us  an  interpretation  of  the  uni- 
verse. That  is,  each  of  them  begins  by  taking 
account  of  certain  mental  processes  which 
play  a  part  in  human  life.  Each  asks  us 
to  win  some  sort  of  touch  with  a  higher  type 
of  consciousness  than  belongs  to  our  natural 
human  existence.  Each  declares  that,  through 
such  a  transformation  of  our  ordinary  con- 
sciousness, either  through  a  flight  from  the 
vain  show  of  sense  into  the  realm  of  pure 
thought,  or  else  through  an  abandonment  of 
the  merely  practical  labors  of  that  user  of 
tools,  the  intellect,  we  shall  find  the  pathway 
to  reality.     Each  in  his  own  way  interprets 


1/ 


VOL.  II  —  S 


257 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

our  natural  mode  of  dealing  with  reality  to 
some  nobler  form  of  insight  which  he  believes 
to  be  corrective  of  our  natural  errors,  or  else, 
in  turn,  interprets  the  supposed  counsels  of 
a  more  divine  type  of  knowledge  to  the  blind- 
ness or  to  the  barrenness  or  to  the  merely 
practical  narrowness  of  our  ordinary  exist- 
ence. 

Each  of  these  philosophers  mediates,  in 
his  own  w^ay,  between  the  spiritual  existence 
of  those  who  sit  in  the  darkness  of  the  cave  of 
sense,  or  who,  on  the  other  hand,  wander  in 
the  wilderness  of  evolutionary  processes  and 
of  intellectual  theories ;  —  he  mediates,  I  say, 
between  these  victims  of  error  on  the  one 
hand,  and  that  better,  that  richer,  spiritual 
life  and  the  truer  insight,  on  the  other  hand, 
of  those  who,  in  this  philosopher's  opinion, 
find  the  homeland  —  be  that  land  the  Pla- 
tonic realm  of  the  eternal  forms  of  being,  or 
the  dwelling-place  which  Bergson  loves,  — 
where  the  artists  see  their  beautiful  visions  of 
endless  change. 

In  brief,  there  is  no  philosophy  of  pure  con- 

258 


THE   WORLD   OF   INTERPRETATION 

ception,  and  there  is  no  philosophy  of  pure 
perception.  Plato  was  a  leader  of  the  souls 
of  those  men  to  whom  he  showed  the  way  out 
of  the  cave,  and  in  whom  he  inspired  the  love 
of  the  eternal.  Bergson  winningly  devotes 
himself  to  saying,  as  any  artist  says,  "Come 
and  intuitively  see  what  I  have  intuitively 
seen."^-^ 

Such  speech,  however,  is  the  speech  neither 
of  the  one  w^ho  trusts  to  mere  conception, 
nor  of  one  who  finds  the  real  merely  in  per- 
ception. It  is  the  speech  of  an  interpreter, 
who,  addressing  himself  to  one  form  of  per- 
sonality or  of  life,  interprets  what  he  takes 
to  be  the  meaning  of  some  other  form  of  life. 

This  thesis,  that  the  philosopher  is  an  in- 
terpreter, simply  directs  our  attention  to  the 
way  in  which  he  is  required  to  define  his 
problems.  And  the  universality  of  these 
problems  makes  this  purely  elementary  task 
of  their  proper  definition  at  once  momentous 
and  difficult.  We  shall  not  lose  by  any  con- 
sideration which  rightly  fixes  our  attention 
upon  an  essential  aspect  of  the  process  of 

259 


•!1 
i 


%i 


7 


-  ■•*'•'!    -"^"'ft'r     "■'T°i''irii  '^'■jimii 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

knowledge  which  the  philosopher  seeks  to  con- 
trol. For  the  philosopher  is  attempting  to 
deal  with  the  world  as  a  whole,  with  reahty 
in  general. 

Why  is  it  that  the  philosopher  has  to  be  an 
interpreter  even  when,  like  Bergson  or  hke 
Plato,  he  tries  to  subordinate  interpretation 
either  to  conception  alone  or  to  perception 
alone  .^  Why  is  it  that  when,  in  his  loftiest 
speculative  flights,  he  attempts  to  seize  upon 
some  intuition  of  reason,  or  upon  some  form 
of  direct  perception,  which  shall  reveal  to  him 
the  inmost  essence  of  reality,  he  nevertheless 
acts  as  interpreter  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  simple. 

XI 

If,  as  a  fact,  we  could,  at  least  in  ideal,  and 
as  a  sort  of  speculative  experiment,  weld  all 
our  various  ideas,  our  practical  ideas  as  well 
as  our  theoretical  ideas,  together  into  some 
single  idea,  whose  ''leading"  we  could  follow 
wherever  it  led,  from  concept  to  percept,  or 
from  percept  to  concept;    and  if  we  could 

260 


THE    WORLD    OF   INTERPRETATION 

reduce  our  problem  of  reality  simply  to  the 
question.  Is  this  one  idea  expressive  of  the 
nature  of  reality  ?  —  then  indeed  some  such 
philosophy  as  that  of  Bergson,  or  as  that  of 
Plato,  might  be  formulated  in  terms  either  of 
pure  perception  or  of  pure  conception.  Then 
the  philosopher  who  thus  welded  his  ideas 
into  one  idea,  and  who  then  assured  himself 
of  the  success  of  that  one  idea,  would  no 
longer  be  an  interpreter. 

Thus,  let  us  imagine  that  we  could,  with 
Spinoza,  weld  together  into  the  one  idea  of 
Substance,  the  totality  of  ideas,  that  is  of  prag- 
matic leadings,  which  all  men,  at  all  times, 
are  endeavoring  to  follow  through  their  ex- 
perience, or  to  express  through  their  will. 
Suppose  that  this  one  idea  could  be  shown  to 
be  successful.  Then  our  philosophy  could 
assume  the  well-known  form  which  Spinoza 
gave  to  his  own  :  — 

By  substance,  Spinoza  means  that  which 
is  "in  itself"  and  which  needs  no  other  to  sus- 
tain or  in  any  ideal  fashion  to  contain  it. 
Hereupon  the   philosopher   finds   it   easy   to 

261 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

assert  that  whatever  is  in  any  sense  real  must 
indeed  be  either  "in  itself"  or  "in  another." 
No  other  idea  need  be  used  in  estimating 
realities  except  the  idea  thus  defined.  The 
only  question  as  to  any  object  is :  Is  this  a 
substance  or  not  ?  A  very  brief  and  simple 
process  of  conceptual  development,  then, 
brings  us  to  Spinoza's  result  that  whatever 
is  "in  another"  is  not  in  the  highest  sense  real 
at  all.  Therefore  there  remains  in  our  world 
only  that  which  is  real  "in  itself."  The  one 
idea  can  be  realized  only  in  a  world  which  is, 
once  for  all,  the  Substance.  The  tracks  of  all 
finite  creatures  that  are  observed  near  the 
edge  of  the  cave  of  this  Substance  lead  (as 
was  long  ago  said  of  Spinoza's  substance) 
only  inwards.  The  world  is  defined  in  terms 
of  the  single  idea,  all  other  human  ideas  or 
possible  ideas  being  but  special  cases  of  the 
one  idea.  The  real  world  is  purely  con- 
ceptual, and  is  also  monistic. 

Suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  that  we  indeed 
recognize  with  Bergson,  and  with  the  pragma- 
tists,  an  endless  and  empirical  wealth  of  ideas 

262 


THE    WORLD    OF   INTERPRETATION 

which,  in  practical  life,  lead  or  do  not  lead 
from  concepts  to  percepts,  as  experience  may 
determine.  Suppose,  however,  that,  with 
Bergson,  we  first  notice  that  all  these  ideal 
leadings  of  the  intellect  constitute,  at  best, 
but  an  endlessly  varied  using  of  tools.  Sup- 
pose that  hereupon,  with  Bergson  and  with 
the  mystics,  we  come  to  regard  all  this  life 
of  the  varied  ideas,  this  mechanical  using  of 
mere  tools,  this  mere  pragmatism,  as  an  essen- 
tially poorer  sort  of  life  from  which  nature  has 
long  since  delivered  the  nobler  of  the  insects, 
from  which  the  artists  can  and  do  escape, 
and  from  which  it  is  the  loftiest  ideal  of  phi- 
losophy to  liberate  those  who  are  indeed  to 
know  reality. 

Then  indeed,  though  not  at  all  in  Spinoza's 
way,  all  the  ideal  leadings  which  the  philosopher 
has  henceforth  to  regard  as  essentially  illu- 
minating, will  simply  blend  into  a  single  idea. 
This  idea  will  be  the  one  idea  of  winning  a 
pure  intuition.  We  shall  define  realitv  in 
terms  of  this  pure  intuition.  And  hereupon 
a  purely  perceptual  view  of  reaUty  will  result. 

263 


1 

I 


'1 


f  ^i 


I 


■        \ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

If,  then,  all  the  ideas  of  men,  if  all  ideas  of 
reaUty,  could  collapse  or  could  blend  or  could 
otherwise  be  ideally  welded  into  a  single 
idea,  then  this  idea  could  be  used  to  define 
reality,  just  as  pragmatism  has  come  to  define 
all  the  endless  variety  of  forms  of  ** truth"  in 
terms  of  the  single  idea  which  gets  the  name 
"success"  or  ** working"  or  ** expediency"  or 
"cash-value,"  according  to  the  taste  of  the 
individual  pragmatist. 

xn 

As  a  fact,  however,  the  genuine  problem, 
whether  of  reality,  or  of  truth,  cannot  be 
faced  by  means  of  any  such  blending  of  all 
ideal  leadings  into  a  single  ideal  leading. 

We  all  of  us  believe  that  there  is  any  real 
world  at  all,  simply  because  we  find  ourselves 
in  a  situation  in  which,  because  of  the  frag- 
mentary and  dissatisfying  conflicts,  antitheses, 
and  problems  of  our  present  ideas,  an  inter- 
pretation of  this  situation  is  needed,  but  is  not 
now  known  to  us.  By  the  "  real  world "  we 
mean  simply  the  '*  true  interpretation  "  oj  this 

264 


THE    WORLD    OF    INTERPRETATION 

our  problematic  situation.  No  other  reason 
can  be  given  than  this  for  believing  that  there 
is  any  real  world  at  all.  From  this  one  con- 
sideration, vast  consequences  follow.  Let  us 
next  sketch  some  of  these  consequences. 

Whoever  stands  in  presence  of  the  problem 
of  reahty  has,  at  the  very  least,  tcTcompare 
two  essential  ideas.  These  ideas  are,  re- 
spectively, the  idea  of  present  experience  and 
the  idea  of  the  goal  of  experience.  The  con- 
trast in  question  has  countless  and  infinitely 
various  forms.  In  its  ethical  form  the  con- 
trast appears  as  that  between  our  actual  hfe 
and  our  ideal  life.  It  also  appears  as  the  Pau- 
Hne  contrast  between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit ; 
or  as  the  Stoic  contrast  between  the  life  of  the 
wise  and  the  life  of  fools.  It  is  also  known  to 
common  sense  as  the  contrast  between  our 
youthful  hopes  and  our  mature  sense  of  our 
Umitations.  The  contrast  between  our  future 
hfe,  which  we  propose  to  control,  and  our 
irrevocable  past  life  which  we  can  never  recall, 
presents  the  same  general  antithesis.  In  the 
future,  as  we  hopefully  view  it,  the  goal  is 

2d5 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

naturally  supposed  to  lie.  But  the  past, 
dead  as  it  is  often  said  to  be,  determines  our 
present  need,  and  sets  for  us  our  ideal  task. 

In  the  world  of  theory  the  same  contrast 
appears  as  that  between  our  ignorance  and 
our  possible  enlightenment,  between  our  end- 
lessly numerous  problems  and  their  solutions, 
between  our  innumerable  uncertainties  and 
those  attainments  of  certainty  at  which  our 
sciences  and  our  arts  aim.  For  our  reUgious 
consciousness  the  contrasts  between  nature 
and  grace,  between  good  and  evil,  between  our 
present  state  and  our  salvation,  between  God 
and  the  world,  merely  illustrate  the  antithesis. 

One  can  also  state  this  antithesis  as  that 
between  our  Will  (which,  as  Schopenhauer  and 
the  Buddhists  said,  is  endlessly  longing)  and 
the  Fulfilment  of  our  will.  Plato,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  mystics  on  the  other,  attempt 
to  conceive  or  to  perceive  some  such  fulfilment, 
according  as  Plato,  or  as  some  mystic,  em- 
phasizes one  or  the  other  of  the  two  cognitive 
processes  to  which  the  philosophers  have 
usually  confined  their  attention. 

266 


THE    WORLD    OF   INTERPRETATION 

This  antithesis  between  two  fundamental 
ideas  presents  to  each  of  us  the  problem  of 
the  universe,  and  dominates  that  problem. 
For  by  the  "  real  world  "  we  mean  the  true 
interpretation  of  the  problematic  situation 
which  this  antithesis  presents  to  us  in  so  far 
as  we  compare  what  is  our  ideal  with  what  is 
so  far  given  to  us.  Whatever  the  real  world 
is,  its  nature  has  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of 
this  antithesis  of  ideas. 

Two  such  ideas,  then,  stand  in  contrast 
when  we  face  our  problem  of  reality.  They 
stand  as  do  plaintiflF  and  defendant  in  court, 
or  as  do  the  ideas  of  the  suffering  patient  and 
his  hopes  of  recovery,  or  as  do  the  wrongs 
which  the  htigant  feels  and  the  rights  or  the 
doom  which  the  law  allows  him.  The  em- 
pirical shapes  which  the  antithesis  takes  are 
simply  endless  in  their  wealth.  They  fur- 
nish to  us  the  special  topics  which  science  and 
common  sense  study.  But  the  general  prob- 
lem which  the  antithesis  presents  is  the 
world-problem.  The  question  about  what  the 
real  world  is,  is  simply  the  question  as  to  what 

267 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

this  contrast  is  and  means.  Neither  of  the  two 
ideas  can  solve  its  own  problem  or  be  judge  in 
its  own  case.  Each  needs  a  counsel,  a  medi- 
ator, an  interpreter,  to  represent  its  cause  to 
the  other  idea. 

In  the  well-known  metaphysical  expression, 
this  contrast  may  be  called  that  between  ap- 
pearance and  reality.  The  antithesis  itself 
is  in  one  sense  the  appearance,  the  phe- 
nomenon, the  world-problem.  The  question 
about  the  real  world  is  that  furnished  to  us  by 
our  experience  of  this  appearance.  When  we 
ask  what  the  real  world  is,  we  simply  ask  what 
this  appearance,  this  antithesis,  this  problem 
of  the  two  contrasting  ideas  both  is  and  means. 
So  to  ask,  is  to  ask  for  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem which  the  antithesis  presents.  That  is, 
we  ask:  "What  is  the  interpretation  of  this 
problem,  of  this  antithesis  ?  "  The  real  world 
is  that  solution.  Every  special  definition  of 
reahty  takes  the  form  of  offering  such  a  solu- 
tion. Whether  a  philosopher  calls  himself 
realist  or  idealist,  monist  or  pluralist,  theist 
or  materia hst,  empiricist   or   rationalist,  his 

268 


THE    WORLD    OF   INTERPRETATION 

philosophy,  wherever  he  states  it,  takes  the 
form  of  saying:  "The  true,  the  genuine  in- 
terpretation of  the  antithesis  is  such  and 
such." 

If  you  say  that  perhaps  there  is  no  solution 
of  the  problem,  that  hypothesis,  if  true,  could 
be  verified  only  by  an  experience  that  in  itself 
would  constitute  a  full  insight  into  the  mean- 
ing of  the  real  contrast,  and  so  would  in  fact 
furnish  a  solution.  In  any  case,  the  real 
world  is  precisely  that  whose  nature  is  ex- 
pressed by  whatever  mediating  idea  is  such 
that,  when  viewed  in  unity  with  the  two 
antithetical  ideas,  it  fully  compares  them, 
and  makes  clear  the  meaning  of  the  contrast. 
But  an  interpretation  is  real  only  if  the  appro- 
priate community  is  real,  and  is  true  only  if  that 
community  reaches  its  goal. 

In  brief,  then,  the  real  world  is  the  Com- 
munity of  Interpretation  w;hich  is  constituted 
by  the  two  antithetic  ideas,  and  their  media- 
tor or  interpreter,  whatever  or  whoever  that 
interpreter  may  be.  If  the  interpretation  is 
a  reahty,  and  if  it  truly  interprets  the  whole 

269 


THE     PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


of  reality,  then  the  community  reaches  its 
goal,  and  the  real  world  includes  its  own  in- 
terpreter. Unless  both  the  interpreter  aryLifie 
community  are  real,  there  is  no  real  world, 

XIII 

After  the  foregoing  discussion  of  the  nature 
and  the  processes  of  interpretation,  we  are 
now  secure  from  any  accusation  that,  from 
this  point  of  view,  the  real  world  is  anything 
merely  static,  or  is  a  mere  idea  within  the  mind 
of  a  finite  self,  or  is  an  Absolute  that  is  di- 
vorced from  its  appearances,  or  is  any  merely 
conceptual  reahty,  or  is  "out  of  time,"  or  is  a 
"block  universe,"  or  is  an  object  of  a  merely 
mystical  intuition. 

Interpretation,  as  we  have  seen  in  our  general 
discussion  of  the  cognitive  process  in  question, 
demands  that  at  least  an  infinite  series  of 
distinct  individual  acts  of  interpretation  shall 
take  place,  unless  the  interpretation  which  is 
in  question  is  arbitrarily  interrupted.  If, 
then,  the  real  world  contains  the  Community 
of  Interpretation  just  characterized,  this  com- 

270 


THE   WORLD   OF   INTERPRETATION 

munity  of  interpretation  expresses  its  life  m 
an  infinite  series  of  individual  interpretation, 
each  of  which  occupies  its  own  place  in  a 
perfectly  real  order  of  time. 

If,  however,  this  community  of  interpreta- 
tion reaches  its  goal,  this  whole  time-process 
is  in  some  fashion  spanned  by  one  insight 
which    surveys    the    unity    of    its    meaning. 
Such  a  viewing  of  the  whole  time-process  by  a 
single  synopsis  will  certainly  not  be  anything 
"timeless."     It  will  not  occur,  on  the  other 
hand,  at  any  one  moment  of  time.     But  its 
nature  is  the  one  empirically  known  to  us  at 
any   one   moment   when  we  clearly  contrast 
two  of  our  own  ideas  and  find  their  mediator. 


XIV 

Nothing  is  more  concretely  known  to  us 
than  are  the  nature,  the  value,  and  the  goal  of 
a  community  of  interpretation.  The  most 
ideal  as  well  as  the  most  scientifically  exact 
interests  of  mankind  are  bound  up  with  the 
existence,  with  the  purposes,  with  the  fortunes, 
and  with  the  unity  of  such  communities. 

271 


^     THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  metaphysical  doctrine  just  set  forth  in^-, 
outline  can  be  summed   up  thus :    The  prob- 
lem of  reality  is  furnished  to  us  by  a  certain 
universal  antithesis  of  two  Ideas,  or,  if   one 
prefers  the  word,  by  the  antithesis  of  two 
Selves.     The  first  thesis  of  this  doctrine  is  that 
Reality  —  the  solution  of  this  problem  —  is  the 
interpretation  of  this  antithesis,  the  process  of 
mediating  between  these  two  selves  and  of  in- 
terpreting each  of  them  to  the  other.     Such  a 
process  of  interpretation  involves,  of  necessity, 
an  infinite  sequence  of  acts  of  interpretation. 
It  also  admits  of  an  endless  variety  within  all 
the  selves  which  are  thus  mutually  interpreted. 
These  selves,  in  all  their  variety,  constitute  the 
life  of  a  single  Community  of  Interpretation, 
whose  central  member  is  that  spirit  of  the 
community  whose  essential  function  we  now 
know.     In  the  concrete,  then,  the  universe 
is  a  community  of   interpretation  whose  life 
comprises  and  unifies  all  the  social  varieties 
and  all  the  social  communities  which,  for  any 
reason,  we  know  to  be  real  in  the  empirical 
world    which   our    social    and    our   historical 

272 


THE   WORLD    OF    INTERPRETATION 

sciences  study.  The  history  of  the  universe, 
the  whole  order  of  time,  is  the  history  and  the 
order  and  the  expression  of  this  Universal 
Community. 

XV 

The  method  by  which  this  doctrine  has 
been  reached  may  also  be  summarily  stated 
thus :  We  began  with  a  sketch  of  the  essen- 
tially social  character  which   belongs  to   our  I 
human    knowledge    of    the    physical    world. 
Here  one  of  our  guides  was  the  way  in  which 
common  sense  interprets  the  being  of  material 
objects.     Our    other   guide   was   the    maxim 
of  scientific  method  which   Professor  Minot, 
wholly  without  any  technically  metaphysical 
purpose,  has  stated.     The  result  of  regarding 
our  human  experience  of  nature  from  these 
two  points  of  view  was  that  we  found  our 
belief  in  the  reality  of  the  physical  world  to 
be  inseparable  from  our  belief  in  the  reality 
of  a  community  of  interpretation.     The  rest 
of  our  discussion  has  been  a  metaphysical  gen- 
eralization of  this  first  result. 


VOL.  II T 


273 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Turning  from  these  special  instances  to  the 
general  philosophical  problem  of  reality,  we 
next  noticed  the  historical  fact  that  phi- 
losophers have  never  been  able  to  define  a 
J  theory  of  the  universe  in  purely  conceptual 
terms,  and  have  been  equally  unable  to  state 
their  doctrines  about  the  world  in  purely  per- 
ceptual terms.  The  philosophers  have  always 
been  interpreters,  in  our  technical  sense  of 
that  term. 

Is  this  limitation  of  the  philosophers  (if 
you  call  it  a  limitation)  due  to  the  fact  that 
they  have  been,  themselves,  human  beings, 
busied  with  interpreting  life  to  their  fellow- 
men,  and  unable  therefore  to  dwell  exclusively 
either  upon  perception  or  upon  conception.^ 

To  this  question  we  have  answered  that  the 
philosopher's  office  as  interpreter  is  not  forced 
upon  him  merely  by  the  fact  that  he  is  ap- 
pealing, as  man,  to  other  men.  The  source 
of  his  task  as  interpreter  lies  deeper.  Real- 
ity cannot IBe^expressed  ex^usfvely  either  in 
perceptual  or  in  conceptual  form.  Nor  can 
its  nature  be  described  in  terms  of  the  "lead- 

274 


THE   WORLD    OF    INTERPRETATION 

ings"  which  any  one  idea  can  express.     How- 
ever you  attempt  to  weld  all  ideas  into  one 
idea   (such  as  Spinoza's  idea  of  substance), 
and  then  to  hold  that  reality  is  the  expression 
of  this  one  idea,  you  stand  in  presence  of  a 
contrast,  an  antithesis  of  at  least  two  ideas, 
"Appearance    and    Reality,"    "Actual    and 
Possible,"  "Real  and  Ideal,"  or  some  other 
such  pair.     If  you  succeed  in  reducing  this 
antithesis  to  its  simplest  statement,  the  world- 
problem  then  becomes  the  problem  of  defining 
the  mediating  idea  in  terms  of  which  this  con- 
trast or  antithesis  can  be  and  is  interpreted. 
If  you  define,   however  tentatively,   such   a 
mediating  idea,  and  then  offer  the  resulting 
interpretation  as  an  account  of  what  the  real 
world  is,  your  philosophy  becomes  an  assertion 
that  the  universe  itself  has  the  form  and  the 
real  character  of  a  community  of  interpreta- 
tion.    You  have  no  reason  for  believing  that 
there  is  any  world  whatever,  except  a  reason 
which  implies  that  some  interpretation  of  the 
antithesis  both  exists  and  is  true.     A  real  and 
a  true  inteipretation  occur  only  in  case  the  cor- 

275 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

responding  community   exists   and   wins    its 
goal. 

In  brief,  if  any  single  idea  endeavors  to  de- 
fine in  terms  of  its  own  "leadings"  the  whole 
nature  of  things,  that  idea  is  in  the  position 
of  the  man  who  undertakes  to  be  judge  of  his 
own  cause.  For  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of 
things  to  involve  an  interpretation  of  its  own 
contrasts,  and  a  mediation  of  its  own  an- 
titheses. To  the  world,  then,  belongs  an  In- 
terpreter of  its  own  life.  In  this  sense,  then, 
the  world  is  the  process  and  the  life  of  the 
Spirit  and  of  the  Community. 


XIV 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 


276 


I'i  / 


LECTURE  XIV 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

rpHE  jChristian  doctrine  of  life  is  domi- 

J-    nated    by    the   ideal   of   the   Universal 

Community;;?  Such  was  the  thesis  defended 

m  the  first  part  of  this  series  of  lectures. 

IJhe  real  world  itself  is,  in  its  wholeness,  a 

Communit£7   This  was  the  metaphysical  re- 


7 


suit    in    which    our  study  of  the  World   of 
Interpretation,  at  the  last  time,  culminated. 

I 

Herewith  the  two  assertions  to  which  our 
study  of  the  Problem  of  Christianity  leads 
are  before  you.  Our  concluding  lectures  must 
make  explicit  the  relations  between  these  two 
assertions.  Hereby  each  of  them  will  be 
interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  other. 

Metaphysical  theory  and  religious  experi- 
ence are  always  contrasting  realms  of  inquiiy 
and  of  insight.  Therefore  the  task  of  our  three 
concluding  lectures  constitutes  a  typical  exer- 

279 


/ 


\ 


TEE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

cise  in  the  process  of  interpretation.     We  have 
to  compare  results  which  have  been  reached 
by    widely   diflferent   methods.     We   have  to 
mediate  between  them.  (The  method  of  inter- 
pretation is  always  the  comparative  method. 
To  compare  and  to  interpret  are  two  names 
for  the  same  fundamental  cognitive  proces^ 
The  fitting  order  for  such  an  enterprise  is 
determined  by  the  subject-matter.     Since  the 
metaphysical  thesis  with  which  our  last  lecture 
closed  is  very  general,  it  will  prove  to  be,  in- 
deed, a  worthless  abstraction,  unless  we  illus- 
trate its  application  to  various  special  problems 
of  life  as  well  as  of  philosophy.     What  I  can 
hope,  within  the  limits  of  our  brief  remaining 
time,  to  make  clearer,  is  what  I  may  call  the 
ground  plan  of  the  World  of  Interpretation. 
~  *^The  universe,  if  my  thesis  is  right,  is  a 
realm  which  is   through  and    through  domi- 
nated by  social  categories]  ^ime,  for  instance, 
expresses  a  system  of  essentially  social  rela- 
tions.    The  present  intergretj^^he  pastjo^ the 
future.     At  each  moment  of  time  the  results  of 
the  whole  world's  history  up  to  that  moment 

280 


",Ja- 


1 

YIIE  DOCTUINE  OF  SIGNS 

are,  so  to  speak,  sinn.ned  up  and  passed  over   ^ 
to  the  future  for  ils  new  deeds  of  creation  and 
of  interpretation.     I  stale  this  principle  here 
m  a  simply  dogmatic  form,  and  merely  as  an  ex- 
ample of  what  I  hav,.  in  n,i„,l  when  I  sa-   that 
ilie  system  of  inela,,hysics  which  is  needed  to 
define  the  conslituliou  of    this  world  of  inter- 
Ipretation  nui.st  he  the  generalized  theory  of  an 
Bideal  society.     Not  the  Self,  not  the  Logos,  not  I   ' 

■the  One,  and  not  the  Many,  but  the  Communitv  '  ^ 
will  be  the  ruling  category  of  such  a  j.hilosophy. 
p  I  must  attemi)l,  then,  within  our.  brief  re- 
!  niaining  time,  to  make  this  general  metaphys- 
ical theory  less  abstract  and  more  articulate.  I 
must  contrast  our  theory  with  others.  I  must  " 
make  more  ex,,licit  its  relation  to  the  Christian 
|ideas.  And  then  I  nmsl,  in  conclusion,  survey 
rwhatwehave  won,  and  summarize  the  outcome. 

II 

S     Let  me  begin   by  a  few  purely  technical 
I  formulations.     Charles    I'eirce,    in    the    dis- 
cussions which  we  iiave  now  so  freely  used, 
mtroduced  into  logic  the  term  "Sign."     He 

281 


? 


A 


"'  I 


'  5 


\ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

used  that  term  as  the  name  for  an.  object  to 
which  somebody  gives  or  should  give  an  in- 
terpretation.    I  have  not  here  to  deal,  at  any 
length,  with  Peirce's  development  of  his  the- 
ory of  Signs.     His  doctrine  was,  as  you  will 
recall,  not  at  first  stated  as  the  basis  for  a 
metaphysical  system,  but  simply  as  a  part  of 
a  logical  theory  of  the  categories.     My  own 
metaphysical  use  of  Pierce's  doctrine  of  signs, 
in  my  account  of  the  World  of  Interpretation 
at   the  last   time,  is   largely  independent   of 
Peirce's  philosophy.     For  the  moment  it  is 
enough  to  say  that,  according  to  Peirce,  just 
as  percepts  have,  for  their  appropriate  objects, 
individually  existent  Things ;  and  just  as_con^ 
ccpts  possess,  for  tlicir  sole  objects,  Universals^ 
— so  interpretations  have,  as  the  objects  which 
they  interpret.  Signs,  f  In  its  most  abstract 
definition,  'therefore,    a    Sign,    according   to'' 
Peirce,  is  something  that  determines  an  in- 
terpretation.    A  sign  may  also  be  called  an 
expression  of  a  mind;    and,  in  our  ordinary 
social   intercourse,  it  actually  is  such  an  ex-^ 
pression.     Or  again,  one  may  say  that  a  sign 

282 


% 


.■4^ 


\ 


1 '» 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 
is,  in  its  essence,  either  a  mind  or  a  quasi- 
mind,  -Can  object  that  fulfils  the  functions 
of  a  mindj 

Thus,  a  word,  a  clock-face,  a  weather-vane, 
or  a  gesture,  is  a  sign.     Our  reason  for  calling 
it  such  is  twofold.     It  expresses  a  mind,  and  it 
calls  for  an  interpretation  through  some  other 
mind,  which  shall  act  as   mediator  between 
the  sign,  or  between  the  maker  of  the  sign, 
and  some  one  to  whom  the  sign  is  to  be  read.' 
Since  an  interpretation  of  a  sign  is,  ia  its 
turn,  the  expression  of  the  interpreter's  mind, 
it  constitutes  a  new  sign,  which  again  calls 
for  interpretation;    and  so  on  without  end; 
unless  the  process  is  arbitrarily  interrupted.' 
So  much  can  be  asserted  as  a  purely  logical 
thesis,  quite  apart  from  metaphysics.  ^  sign,   " 
then,  is  an  object  whose  being  consists  in  the 
fact  that  the  sign  calls  for  an  interpretation  ^ 
The  process  of  interpretation,  as  it  occurs  in 
our  ordinary  social  life,  sufficiently  illustrates 
the  meaning  of  Peirce's  new  term.     Peirce 
insists  that  the  signs,  viewed  simply  from  a 
logical  point  of  view,  constitute  a  new  and 

283 


( 


\ 


1 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

-  .  fundamentally  important  category.  Qle  sets 

this  category  as  a  ** third,"  side  by  side  with 
the  classic  categorie|]  of  the  **universals" 
which  form  the  '* first"  category,  and  the 
"individuals,"  which,  in  Peirce's  logic,  form 
the  "second"  category. 

Peirce,  as  I  have  said,  is  not  responsible  for 
the  metaphysical  theory  about  the  world  of  in- 
terpretation with  which  our  last  lecture  closed. 
But  his  terminology  enables  us  to  summarize 
that  theory  by  stating  our  ownjmetaphysical 

-  thesis  thus:     "The  universe  consists  of  real 
Signs  and  of  their  interpretation.^ 

-  \Tn  the  order  of  real  time  the  events  of  the 
world  are  signs.  They  are  followed  by  in- 
terpreters, or  by  acts  of  interpretation  which 
our  own  experience  constantly  exemplifies. 
For  we  live,  as  selves,  by  interpreting  the 
events  and  the  meaning  of  our  experience. 
History  consists  of  such  interpretations. 

These  acts  of  interpretation  are,  in  their 
turn,  expressed,  in  the  order  of  time,  by  new 
signs.  [The  sequence  of  these  signs  and  in- 
terpretations constitutes  the  history  of  the 

284 


THE  DOCTRI^IsE  OF  SIGNS 

universej   WTiatever    our    experience    exem- 
plifies,  our    metaphysical    doctrine    of    signs 
generalizes,  and  applies  to  the  world  at  large. 
The  world's  experience  is,  from  this  point'/ 
of  view,  not  merely  a  flux.  JFor,  as  Bergson  I 
rightly    asserts,    the    world    of    any    present  (^  ^ 
moment  of  time  is  a  summary  of  the  results  of  i 
all  past  experience.     This  view  of  Bergson's, 
however,  [sjrio^ere  intuition,  but  is  itself  an 
interpretation.  "  Uur  own  metaphysical  thesis 
states  in  terms  of  interpretation  what  Bergson 
states  as  if  it  were  a  result  of  simple  intuition} 
Since  any  idea,  and  especially  any  antithesis 
or  contrast  of  ideas,  is,  according  to  our  meta- 
physical  thesis,   a  sign   which   in   the   world 
finds  its  real  interpretation,  our  metaphysical 
theory  may  be  called  a  ** doctrine  of  signs." 
The  title  which  I  have  given  to  this  lecture 
serves  to  direct  attention,   through   the  use 
of  a  purely  technical  term,  to  the  main  issue. 
This  issue  is  the  one  presented  by  the  thesis 
that  the  very  being  of  the  universe  consists*! 
in  a  process  whereby  the  world  is  interpreted,  J 
—  not  indeed  in  its  wholeness,  at  any  one 

285 


h 


^E    PROBLEM   VF    CHRISTIANITY 

moment  of  time,  but  in  and  through  an  in- 
S  finite  series  of  acts  of  interpretation.     This 

^  infinite  series  constitutes  the  temporal  order 
of  the  world  with  all  its  complexities.  The 
temporal  order  is  an  order  of  purposes  and  of 
deeds,  simply  because  it  is  of  the  essence  of 
every  rational  deed  to  be  an  effort  to  interpret 
a  past  life  to  a  future  life ;  while  every  act  of 
interpretation  aims  to  introduce  unity  into 
life,  by  mediating  between  mutually  contrast- 
ing or  estranged  ideas,  minds,  and  purposes. 

.  If  we  consider  the  temporal  world  in  its  whole- 
ness, it  constitutes  in  itself  an  infinitely  com- 
plex Sign.  This  sign  is,  as  a  whole,  inter- 
preted to  an  experience  which  itself  includes  a 
synoptic  survey  of  the  whole  of  time.  Such  is 
a  mere  sketch  of  our  doctrine  of  the  world  of 
interpretation. 

Ill 

I  may  aid  towards  a  further  understanding 
of  our  metaphysical  thesis  by  using,  at  this 
point,  an  illustration. 

When  you  observe,  at  a  crossing  of  roads, 

286 


> 


J 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SliiJNS 

a   sign-post,  you   will    never    discover    what  . 
the  real  sign-post  is,  either  by  continuing  to 
perceive  it,  or  by  merely  conceiving  its  struc- 
ture or  its  relations  to  any  perceived  objects, 
or  to  any  merely  abstract  laws  in  heaven  or 
in  earth.     Nor  can  you  learn  what  the  sign- 
post is  by  any  process  of  watching  in  the 
course    of    your    individual    experience    the 
" workings''  of  any  ideas  that  it  suggests  to 
you  as  this  individual  man.     You  can  under- 
stand what  the  sign-post  is  only  if  you  learn  to 
read   it^For   its  very  being  as  a  sign-post 
consists  in  its  nature  as  a  guide,  needing  in- 
terpretation, and  pointing  the  way.     To  know 
the  real   sign-post,  you  must   then  learn  to 
interpret  it  to  a  possible  hearer  to  whom  you 
address  your  interpretation.     This  being   to 
whom  you  address  your  interpretation  must  be 
a  self  distinct  from  your  individual  self.     If, 
then,  the  sign-post  is  a  sign-post  at  all,  there  are 
beings  in  the  world  that  are  neither  individual 
objects  of  perception  nor  yet  beings  such  that 
they  are  mere  universals,  —  the  proper  ob- 
jects for  conception. 

2S7 


^ 


I-. 


OBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


If  the  sign-post  is  a  real  sign-post,  there  is 
in  the  world  a  community  constituted  of  at 
.least   three   distinct   minds.     There   is,   first, 
the  mind  whose  intention  to  point  out  the 
way  is  expressed  in  the  construction  of  this 
sign-post.     There  is  the  mind  to  which   the 
sign-post  actually  points  out  the  way.     But 
the  sign-post   does  not  effectively  point  out 
the  way  to  anybody  unless,  either  by  the  aid 
of  his  own  individual  memory,  or  of  somebody 
who  helps  him  to  read  the  sign,  he  learns 
what  the  sign  means.     There  must  then  be  a 
third  mind  which  interprets  the  sign-post  to 
the  inquiring  wayfarer.     The  wayfarer,  if  he 
knows  how  to  read,  may  be  his  own  interpreter. 
\  rBut  there  remain  the  three  distinct  mental  func-  *^ 
L    tions.     There  is  the  function  of  the  mind  whose 
purpose  the  sign  expresses ;  there  is  the  mind 
which  is  guided  by  the  interpretation  of  the 
sign;  and  there  is  the  function  of  the  interpre- 
ter to  whom  the  reading  of  the  sign  is  due. 
All  these  minds  or  functions  must  be  real  and 
distinct  and  must  form  one  real  community^ 
if  indeed  the  sign-post  is  a  real  sign-post  at  all. 

288 


N 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

This  illustration  may  help  us  to  grasp  what 
the  first  thesis  of  our  metaphysical  doctrine 
means,  (^ur  experience,  as  it  comes  to  us.  (^ 
is  a  realm  of  Sign^  That  is,  the  facts  of 
experience  reseir.ble  sign-posts.  £You  can  never  ~ 
exhaustively  find  out  what  they  are  by  re- 
sorting either  to  perception  or  to  conceptionTJ 
Nor  can  you  define  experience  merely  in  terms 
of  the  sort  of  knowledge  which  pragmatism 
emphasizes. Ij^o    "working"    of    any    single 
idea  can  show  what  a  real  fact  of  experience 
is!7  For  a  fact  of  experience,  as  you  actually 
view  that  fact,  is  first  an  event  belonging  to 
an  order  of   time,  —  an   event   preceded   by 
an  infinite  series  of  facts  whose   meaning  it 
summarizes,  and  leading  to  an  infinite  series 
of  coming  events,  into  whose  meaning  it  is 
yet  to  enter.!    But  the  past  and  future  of  our 
real  experience   are  objects   neither  of  pure 
perception  nor  of  pure  conceptioiTl   Nor  can 
you,  at  any  present  moment,  verify  any  pres- 
ent idea  of  yours  about  any  past  event.     Nor 
can  you  define  past  and  future  in  terms  of 
the    present    workings    of    any    ideas.  £Tast 


^ 


\ 


VOL.  II  —  U 


289 


;HK    1  KOBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

time  and  future  time  are  known  solely  through 
interpretations^^  Past  time  we  regard  as  real, 
because  we  view  our  memories  as  signs  which 
/need  and  possess  their  interpretations.     Our 
expectations    are    interpreted    to   our   future 
A^  ^selves  by  our  present  deeds.     Therefore  we 
\Sregard  our  expectations  as  signs  of  a  future. 
Therefore,  to  a  being  who  merely  perceived 
and  conceived,  or  who  lived  wholly  in  the  pres- 
^        ent  workings  of  his  ideas,  past  time  and  future 
time  would  be  as  meaningless  as  the  sign-post 
ji^     would  be  to  the  wayfarer  who  could  not  read, 
and  who  found  nobody  to  interpret  to  him 
~  its    meaning.  rTf    the    past    and    future    are 
reaUties,  then  they  constitute   a   Ufe   which 
belongs  to  some  real  community,  whose  ideas 
^of  past  and  of  future  are  really  interpretedj 
Now  our  doctrine  of  the  world  of  interpre- 
tation extends  to  all  reahty  the  presupposi- 
tions which  we  use  in  all  our  dealings  with 
past    and    future    time.  jjDur    memories    are 
signs  of  the  past;    our  expectations  are  signs 
/of  the  future.     Past  and  future  are  real  in  so 
far  as  these  signs  have  their  real  interpretation.] 

290 


^■%?! 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

Our  metaphysical  thesis  generalizes  the  rules 
which  constantly  guide  our  daily  interpre- 
tations of  life.  All  contrasts  of  ideas,  all 
varieties  of  experience,  all  the  problems  which 
finite  experience  possesses,  are  signs.  Q*he 
real  world  contains  (so  our  thesis  asserts)  the  - 
interpreter  of  these  signs,  and  the  very  being 
of  the  world  consists  in  the  truth  of  the  inter- 
pretation which,  in  the  whole  realm  of  experi-"' 
ence,  these  signs  obtain^ 

Let  us  turn  back  from  these  technical  for- 
mulations and  from  these  illustrations,  and 
come  again  closer  to  the  real  life  for  which  they 
are  intended  to  stand. 


1 


IV 

Despite  my  frequent  mention  of  differ- 
ences, there  is  one  respect  in  which  I  am  in 
full  agreement  with  the  spirit  of  pragmatism, 
as  James  defined  it.  JAny  metaphysical  thesis, 
if  it  has  a  meaning  at  all,  is  the  expression  of 
an  attitude  of  the  will  of  the  one  who  asserts^ 
this  thesi?^ 

In    a    remarkable    recent    book,    entitled: 

291 


I 


/■ 


■^?^ 


(( 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

"Die  Philosophic  des  Als  Ob,"  Vaihinger  has 
given  his  own  formulation  to  a  view  which 
he   originally   reached   independently   of   the 
influence  of  pragmatism.     It  is  the  viev^  that  a 
philosophy  is,  in  its  essence,  a  resolution  to 
treat  the  real  world  as  if  that  world  possessed 
certain  characters,  and  as  if  our  experience 
enabled  us  to  verify  these  characters.     This 
resolution  is,  in  its  essence,  an  active  attitude 
of  the  will.     Therefore  Voluntarism  must  form 
an  essential  part  of  every  philosophy  which 
justly  interprets  our   metaphysical  interests. 
For   our   metaphysical   interests   are   indeed 
interests  in  directing  our  will,  in  defining  our 
attitude    towards    the    universe,    in    making 
articulate  and  practical  our  ideals  and  our 
.resolutions.     So  far,  I  say,  Vaihinger  and  the 
pragma tists  are  right. 
[j^do  not  beheve,  however,  that  our  volun- 
tarism must  remain  a  mere  pragmatism.     I 
have    long   defended    a    philosophy,   both    of 
human  hfe  and  of  the  universe,  which  I  have 
preferred  to  call  an  ''Absolute  VoluntarismTH 
I  developed  such  a  philosophy,  partly  under 

292 


V 


II 


I 


'A 


I 


THE  DOCTRINE  OP  SIGNS 
the  influence  of  James,  but  long  before  re      , 
pragmatism    was   in    ^      .•      ^  °^"''^«  ^^ecent 

vvas   m   question.     In    Jt,   ^    ^ 
general    form     ihi.      u;  ™°®t 

•»d  decisive  aUrt^dT^TtTe  „i     :rT"" 

risIlUittitnW«T    u  ^^^''^  IS  tile 

_-i:^-^^tiiitucle,f  when  we  stanW  ,v. 

the  universe'^w     i  Presence  of 

"verse,  and  when  we  undertake  f^    i 

'^zr::  *ir  ™-"  -= 

«-.ne  w«  rrrx:  '"""""^  - 

-^  and  «ek.     But  ,  i  ^  ^I.T 

Philosophy  of  He  'As  if-  i3   j;.  t 
a»Mrls,  merely  a  sv,tp„    ,     '•  "  ^"'''"ser 

*n~«  ,„  ,,^  J    <f'^  a„  ,b»,„,e 

one,  and  but  ..r.^      •  ■  ^^  there  is 

na  but  one,  „ght  attitude  of  th.      -ii 
towards  the  universe,  this  attitude  L  '    ' 

assumed,   is  essent;  n  "'^"^e,  when  once 

essentially  creative  of  it^  ^ 
realm   of   deed*:      Tt  .  "^  ^^" 

«eeds.     Its   so-called   fictions   are 

293  ' 


) 


Ii 


J 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

therefore,  not  mere  fictions,  for  they  constitute 
a  real  Hfe.  Its  so-called  successes  are  no 
merely  transient  successes.  For  if  there  is 
any  true  success  at  all,  every  such  success, 
however  petty  it  seems,  has  a  world-wide 
meaning.  The  realm  of  true  success  is  not 
merely  a  world  of  change.  For  deeds  once 
done  are  irrevocable;  and  every  deed  echoes 
throughout  the  universe.  TThe  past  is  un- 
changing. The  expression  of  the  wall  con- 
stitutes  itself   an   actual   life.  I   The  creative 

■■■■■J 

activity  of  the  will  is  therefore  no  mere  play 
with  figments.  ^  It  has  the  reality  of  a  realm 
of  deeds.  And  every  deed  has  a  value  that 
extends  throughout  the  world  of  the  will.  / 
Each  act  is  to  be  judged  in  the  hght  of  the 
principle:  "Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it 
unto  the  least  of  these." 

I  do  not  wish  here  to  dwell  upon  the  general 
features  which  I  have  repeatedly  ascribed  to 
-  this  world  of  the  will,  where  every  fact  is  the 
expression  of  an  individual  decision,  and  is 
therefore  an  absolute  fact.  I  do  not  intend  to 
repeat  even  the  outhnes  of  my  former  state- 

294 


^ 


f 


'I 

I 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 
ments,  both  of  this  absolute  voluntarism  and 
of  my  own  type  of  idealism.  I  have  too  often 
told  that  tale.  So  far  as  possible,  I  wish,  in 
the  present  exposition,  to  speak  as  if  all  my 
former  words  were  unspoken. 

As  a  fact,  I  still  hold  by  all  the  essential 
features  of  these  former  attempts  to  state 
the  case  for  idealism.  But  at  present  I  am 
dealing  with  the  World  of  Interpretation,  and 
with  the  metaphysics  of  the  Community. 
This  I  believe  to  be  simply  a  new  mode  of 
approach  to  the  very  problems  which  I  have 
formerly  discussed. 

My  present  interest  lies  in  applying  the 
spirit  of  my  absolut^ voluntarism  to  the  new 
problems  which  ourempirical  study  of  the 
Christian  ideas,  and  our  metaphysical  theory  of 
interpretation,  have  presented  for  our  scrutiny. 
With  this,  then,  as  the  end  now  in  view,  let 
me  try  to  tell  you  what  attitude  of  will,  what 
practical  bearing  towards  the  universe,  what 
resolution,  what  plan  of  life,  should  charac- 
terize, in  my  opinion,  any  one  who  undertakes 
to  view  the  world  in  the  light  of  that  doctrine 

295 


» 


i     1 


IV 


/ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

concerning  the   nature  and   the  business  of 
interpretation,    which,    at    the    last    time,    I 

sketched. 

This  essentially  socid  universe,  this  com- 
munity which  we  have  now  declared  to  be 
real,  and  to  be,  in  fact,  the  sole  and  supreme 
reality,  —  the  Absolute,  —  what  does  it  call 
upon  a  reasonable  being  to  do  ?     What  kind 
of  salvation  does  it  offer  to  him  ?     What  in- 
terest does  it  possess  for  his  will  ?     If  he  ac- 
cepts such  a  view  of  things,  how  should  he 
bear  himself  towards  the  problem  of  life  ?    To 
what  ideas  of  his  own  does  such  a  view  offer 
success  ?     How  can  he  bring  such  a  view  into 
closer  relations  with    ordinary  human  expe- 
rience ? 


I 


James  declared  that  the  typical  pragmatist 
is  a  man  of  an  essentially  dramatic  temper  of 
mind.  I  now  have  to  point  out  that  the  be- 
liever in  our  world  of  interpretation  also 
centres  his  interests  about  a  genuinely  dra- 
matic undertaking. 

296 


): 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

I  have  already  said  that  the  world  of  in- 
terpretation includes  an  infinite  series  of  acts 
of  interpretation.  I  have  shown,  in  an  earlier 
lecture,  that  every  act  of  interpretation  in- 
volves novelty.  The  believer  in  this  doctrine 
of  signs,  the  one  to  whom  every  problem, 'every 
antithesis,  every  expression  of  mind,  every 
tragedy  of  life,  is  a  sign  calling  for  interpreta- 
tion, and  in  whose  belief  the  world  contains 
its  own  interpreter,  both  contemplates  and 
shares  in  a  world  drama.  But  the  attitude 
of  will  which  befits  one  w^ho  holds  this  doc- 
trine of  signs  can  only  be  rightly  understood 
in  case  we  first  distinguish  three  very  general 
attitudes  of  the  will  with  which,  in  certain  of 
their  special  forms,  we  have  now  become  well 
acquainted.  j^Our  will  is  always  dramatic  in  - 
its  expressions.  It  passes  from  deed  to  deedT/ 
Its  world  is  a  world  of  sequences  and  of  enter- 
prises. But  when  it  surveys  this  world,  and 
when  it  summarizes  the  spirit  of  its  under- 
takingg^he  will  may  assume  any  one  of  three 
distinct  modes  of  appreciating  both  itself  and 
its  realm  of  actual  or  of  possible  deedsTl 

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THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

VI 

The  first  of  these  modes,  the  first  of  the 
attitudes  of  the  will  to  which  I  here  direct 
your  attention,  is  that  to  whicliSchopenhauer 
gave   the   name,     "The   Affirmation   of    the 
Will  to  live.f]  This  phrase  of  Schopenhauer 
is  intended  by   its   author  to  be  extremely 
general,  and  to  apply  to  active  dispositions 
which  are  exemplified  by  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men.     Whatever  the  natural  man 
seeks,  he  intends,  says  Schopenhauer,  to  live 
if  he  can.     And  when  the  natural  man  affirms 
this  will  to  live,  he  may  have  in  mind  any 
one  of  countless  different,  or  even   conflict- 
ing, motives  and  purposes. 

He  may  be  seeking  pleasure,  wealth,  power, 
praise,  material  possessions,  or  manifold  spir- 
itual goods.  He  may  call  it  righteousness  or 
food,  that  he  desires.  It  may  be  the  de- 
struction of  his  enemies  or  the  prosperity  of 
his  friends  that  he  has  in  mind  when  he  sets 
out  towards  his  goal.  He  may  be  of  any 
calling  that  you  please.     He  may  be  a  world- 

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THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

ling  or  a  recluse;  a  beggar  or  a  king;  an 
outcast  or  the  centre  of  an  admiring  company. 
In  brief,  his  special  purposes  may  vary  as  you 
will.  The  ideas,  the  "leadings,"  which,  in  the 
pragmatic  sense,  he  desires  to  have  succeed, 
may  vary  from  man  to  man  and  from  life  to 
life,  throughout  the  whole  range  of  our  social 
and  individual  objects  of  desire. 

But,  in  any  case,  if,  in  Schopenhauer's 
sense,  such  a  man  affirms  the  will  to  live,  he 
essentially  desires  to  be  himself,  whoever  he 
may  be,  and  to  win  his  aims,  whatever  the 
special  aims  be  to  which  he  commits  himself, 
fjhis  desire  for  self-assertion,  then,  is  present 
in  all  the  Protean  shapes  of  the  affirmation  of 
the  will  to  live,  and  vivifies  themj 

\While  one  affirms  the  will  to  live,  he  there- 
fore gives'  himself  over  to  the  great  game  of 
lifej  As  an  individual  man  he  has  his  friends 
and  his  enemies;  his  triumphs  and  defeats; 
his  joys  and  his  sorrows  of  pain  and  grief. 
But  what  happens  to  him  does  not,  in  so  far, 
touch  the  heart  and  core  of  his  will.  He  may 
shout  with  triumph,  or  cry  aloud  in  his  woe ; 

299 


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THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

he  may  pray  to  his  gods  for  help,  or  may  curse 
his  fate  in  what  he  calls  his  despair;  but 
withal,  he  means  to  continue  his  pursuit  of 
the  objects  of  desire.  He  may  repent  of  his 
sins;  but  not  of  being  himself.  He  may,  in 
his  hatred  of  ill-fortune,  resort  even  to  sui- 
cide. But  such  suicide  is  merely  a  revolt 
against  disaster.  It  only  affirms  in  its  own 
\  passionate  way  the  longing  for  some  life  which 
is  not  indeed  the  present  life  of  the  rebel 
who  seeks  suicide,  but  which,  in  all  his  con- 
demnation of  his  own  deeds  or  of  his  own 
misadventures,  he  still  longs  to  live,  if  only 
death  and  the  universe  will  yet  permit  him 
to  express  himself. 

VII 

r 

Schopenhauer  usually  emphasizes  the  es- 
^sentially  selfish  nature  of  this  will  to  live,  as 
it  inspires  the  individual  man.  Yet  Schopen- 
hauer fully  recognizes  that  we  are  all  social 
beings,  and  that  the  will  to  live  can  keep  us 
eagerly  busy  in  and  with  the  world  of  our 
fellows.     Only,   as  Schopenhauer  rightly  in- 

300 


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THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 
terprets  this  affirmation  of  the  will  to  live 
the  recognition  of  his  fellow-men  which  the' 
victim  of  this  will  to  live  constantlv  makes 
IS  based,  so  to  speak,  upon  the  natural  solip- 
sism of  the  individual  will. 

And  here  we  come  to  the  very  root,  the 
inmost  meaning,  of  this  first  of  the  three 
attitudes  of  the  will  which  we  are  here 
considering. 

One   who   thus,   in   Schopenhauer's   sense 
affirms  the  will  to  live,  may  cheerfullv  and 
sincerely  acknowledge  that  other  men  exist 
and  he  may  be  a  good  member  of  society' 
But  he  tends  to  found  this  acknowledgment 
of  his  fellow-man,  and  of  the  social  will,  upon 
what  most  philosophers  regard  as]>n  argu- 
ment from  analogy-r^  A  man  may,  by  reason 
ot  such  analogy,  extend  the  realm  to  which  his 
will  to  live  applies  its  interests.     The  early 
and  purely  natural  forms  of  family  loyalty 
and  of  clan  loyalty  depend  upon  such  prac- 
tical expansions  of  the  self.     But,  as  we  saw 
when    we   studied    the   Pauline    doctrine   of 
original  sin,  the  will  to  live  constantly  meets 

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THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

r  its  opponent  in  the  wills  of  other  individuals. 
And  then  its  primal  solipsism  revives;    and 

[  it  hates  its  fellows.  And  even  when  such  a 
will  recognizes  that  an  organized  social  will 
is  in  some  sense  a  reality,  it  finds  this  social 
wdll  either  as  a  foreign  fact,  or  as  a  mystery. 
^  brief,  all  the  social  facts  seem  to  a  man 
in  whom  Schopenhauer's  will  to  live  finds  its 
natural  affirmation,  external  and  in  general 
problematic,  —  known  only  through  analogy/ 
and  doubtfullj^)  I  will  my  own  life;  and 
observe  my  own  life.  My  dealings  with  you 
seem,  from  this  point  of  view,  to  be  due  to 
motives  external  to  this  will  of  mine. 

"Why,"  says  Professor  James,  addressing 
a  supposed  fellow-man  in  one  of  his  essays  on 
Radical  Empiricism,  "Why  do  I  postulate 
your  mind  ?  Because  I  see  your  body  acting 
in  a  certain  way.  Its  gestures,  facial  move- 
ments, words,  and  conduct  generally  are 
*  expressive,'  so  I  deem  it  actuated,  as  my  own 
is,  by  an  inner  life  like  mine.  This  argu- 
ment from  analogy  is  my  reason,  whether  an 
instinctive  belief  runs  before  it  or  not.     But 

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THE   DOCTRINE   OF  SIGNS 

what  is   'your  body'  here  but  a  percept  in 
my  field  ?     It  is  only  as  animating  that  ob-    ^ 
ject,  my  object,  that  I  have  any  occasion  to 
think  of  you  at  all." 

In    the    form    of    this    familiar    argument 
from   analogy,  —  an    argument    which    many    Jf^ 
philosophers  indeed  regard  as  expressing  our 
principal  reason  for  believing  that  our  neigh- 
bors' minds  are  realities,  —  James  also  puts 
into  words  an  equally  familiar  aspect  of  the 
metaphysical    view    which    naturally    accom- 
panies this  affirmation  of  the  will  to  live.     I 
perceive  my  own  inner  life,  or,  at  all  events,  / 
my  own  facts  of  perception.     By  analogy  I 
extend    the  world    thus  primarily  known  to 
me.  jTOther  men  are,  in  this  way,  hypothetical 
extensions  of  myself.!   For  the  rest,  I  believe 
in  them  because,  unless  I  take  due  account  of  ( 
them,  they  snub  or  thwart  my  own  will  to 
live.     My  ideas  are  my  own,  and  it  is  of  the 
essence  of  my  life  as  this  individual  that  I 
want  my  own  ideas  to  "work."     Upon  this 
affirmation  of  my  will  to  Hve  depends  all  the 
truth  that  I  shall  ever  come  to  know. 

303 


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THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

/Pragmatism,  in  its  recent  forms,  is  indeed 
one  of  the  most  effective  philosophical  ex- 
pressions which  Schopenhauer's  "Will  to  live" 
has  ever  received.  Pragmatism  is  fond  of 
insisting  upon  its  cordial  and  unquestionably 
sincere  recognition  both  of  the  social  world  and 
of  the  real  existence  of  many  selves,  and  of 
countless  distinct  ideasj 

But  as  a  fact,  this  recognition  of  the  many 

selves,  of  the  real  world,  and  of  the  infinite 

variety  of  ways  in  which  different  ideas  obtain 

now  one  and  now  another  "w^orking,"  —  this 

entire  view  of  truth  and  of  reality,  —  when 

pragmatism    deals    with     such     matters,    is 

founded  upon  the  view  that  (as  James  loved 

to    say)    all    "workings"    are    "particular." 

Each  idea  aims  at  accomplishing  the  event 

which,  if  reached,  then  and  there  constitutes 

the  truth  of  that  particular  idea.  \Each  idea 

therefore   expresses   and,    as    far   as   it    can, 

^affirms  its  own  will  to  live)    Each  idea  aims  at 

its   own   success,  (jdeas,   like   all   the   other 

facts   of   James's   world,    hang   together,    as 

/James  was  accustomed  to  say,  "by  the  edges,**- 

304 


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M#: 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF  SIGNS 
if  indeed  they  hang  together  at  all.     Their 
unities  are  temporary,  accidental,  and   non.< 
essential.    [The  world  of  truth  is  thus  indeed 
a  dramatic  world  where  each  idea  asserts  it- 
self while  it  canj 

The  life  of  truth  is  a  drama  wherein  each 
pragmatic  "leading,"  each  individual  expres- 
sion of  the  will  to  succeed,  "struts  and  frets 
its  hour  upon  the  stage,  and  then  is  heard  no 
more." 

Such  is  the  philosophy  wherein  Schopen- 
hauer's  affirmation  of  the  will  to  live  finds  its 
most  recent,  and,  on  the  whole,  as  I  suppose, 
its  most  effective  expression. 

VIII 

In  strong  contrast  to  the  affirmation  of 
the  will  to  live,  ISchopenhauer  placed  that 
attitude  which  he  "defined  as  the  resignation, 
-  the  denial  of  the  will  to  live"n  Here  we' 
have  to  deal  with  a  tendency  too  well  known 
to  all  students  of  the  history  of  the  spiritual 
life  to  need,  in  this  place,  extended  portrayal, 
and    too   simple    in   its    fascinating  contrast 


VOL.  II  —  X 


305 


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( 


/) 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

with  our  natural  life  to  require  minute  analy- 
sis.    This  is  the  attitude  of  the  will  which 
Southern  Buddhism  taught  as  the  sole  and 
sufficient  way  of  salvation.     In  the  form  of 
saintly    resignation   the    same   ideal   has    re- 
ceived countless  Christian  expressions.     Re- 
peatedly  this   form   of    self-denial    has   been 
supposed  to  constitute  the  essence  of  Christian- 
ity.    Repeatedly  the  expounders  and  defend- 
ers of    the    Christian    doctrine  of    life    have 
been  obliged  to  insist  that  the  Christian  form 
of  salvation  does  not  consist  in   this   simple 
abandonment  of  the  will  to  live.     I  will  not 
here  repeat  the  tale  which  the  greatest  work 
of  Christianity  throughout  the  ages  has  so 
freely  illustrated.     Resignation  alone  does  not 
save.     To  abandon  his  will  to  live  does  not 
by  itself  enable  the  individual  to  win  the  true 
goal  of  life.     Let  us,  for  the  moment,  simply 
accept  this  fact. 

But  since  we  are  here  interested  in  the 
metaphysical  relations  of  these  attitudes  of 
the  will,  let  us  mention,  in  passing,  that  the 
resignation  of  the  will  to  live  is  an  attitude 

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THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

to  which  there  correspond  appropriate  forms 
of  metaphysical   opinion.     Here,   again,   the 
connections  are  well  known,  and  need  not 
here  be  dwelt  upon.     It  is  enough  to  say  that 
whoever  abandons  the  will  to  live,^eases,  of 
course,  to  be  interested  in  those  "workings" 
of  ideas  which  pragmatism  regards  as  bring- 
ing us  into  empirical  and  momentary  touch 
with  the  real JTo  such  a  resigned  will,  there 
remain  only  the  cognitive  processes  of  pure 
conception  and  of  pure  perception  to  consider!! 
On  the  whole,  in  the  history  of  thought  those 
for  whom  salvation  consists  in  the  denial  of 
the  will  to  live  have  resorted  to  the  metaphysics  ** 
of  pure  perception,  and  have  been  mystics. 

As  has  now  been  repeatedly  pointed  out  by 
his  critics,  Bergson's  philosophy  consists  of 
two  parts,  —  a  pragmatism  which  he  regards 
as  always  incomplete  and  unsatisfactory,  and 
a  mysticism  which,  as  he  more  fully  expresses 
himself,  he  tends  to  make  more  prominent. 
The  corresponding  attitudes  of  the  will  also 
play  their  part,  both  in  Bergson's  cosmology 
and  m  his  metaphysics.     On  the  whole,  Berg- 

307 


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THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

son  thus  far  emphasizes  the  joyous  aspect  of 
his  own  philosophy  of  Ufe.     But  plainly,  in 
his  view,  the  evolutionary  process  has  been 
dominated  by  the  will  to  live.     And  the  in- 
evitable outcome  of  such  a  domination,   so 
long  as  the  will  to  live  takes  the  form  which 
Schopenhauer  and  Bergson  ascribe  to  it,  is 
the  discovery  that  such  a  realm  of  mere  vital 
y  impulse    is    vanity,    and    vexation    of    spirit. 
Whenever  the  mysticism  of  Bergson  is  fully 
developed,  by  himself  or  by  his  followers,  there 
will  come  to  be  expressed  the  corresponding 
^^  attitude  of  the  will.     The  vital  impulse  will 
v^'be   transformed   into   resignation;    as   Berg- 
^/son's  insistence  upon  free  activity  has  already 
^  \  been    subordinated   to   his   counsel    that   we 
^  should  give  ourselves  over  to  mere  perception. 
When  he  tells  us   that   the   true  artist  per- 
ceives "for  the  sake  of  nothing,  for  the  mere 
pleasure      of      perceiving,"      we      remember 
Schopenhauer's  saint,  for  whom  "  This  our  so 
real  world,  with  all  its  suns  and  its  milky  ways," 
became  "  Nothing."     Such,  in  fact,  is  the  end 
of  the  .mystic. 

•    308 


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THE  DOCTRINE  Of  SIGNS 

IX 

But  there  is  indeed  a  third  attitude  of  the 
will.  It  is  not  Schopenhauer's  attitude  of 
the  affirmation  of  the  will  to  live.  It  is  also 
not  the  other  attitude  which  Schopenhauer 
believed  to  be  the  sole  and  sufficient  salva- 
tion of  the  will.  And  this  third  attitude  of 
the  will  possesses  its  appropriate  metaphysics. 

As  for  w^hat  this  attitude  of  the  will  is,  — 
when  w^e  consider,  not  its  doctrine  of  the 
universe,  but  its  doctrine  of  life,  —  we  are 
already  well  acquainted  with  it,  because  our 
entire  discussion  of  the  Christian  ideas  was 
devoted  to  making  us  familiar  with  its  moral 
and  its  religious  meaning.  In  returning,  at 
this  point,  to  the  mention  of  this  attitude  of 
the  will,  I  do  so  because  we  now  are  ready  to 
understand  the  relation  between  this  type  of 
will,  and  the  metaphysical  doctrine  of  which 
I  believe  it  to  be  the  fitting  accompaniment. 
Whoever  has  learned  to  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  this  third  way  in  which  the  will  can 
bear  itself  towards  its  world,  will  therefore 

309 


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THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTiInITY 
be  better  prepared  to  grasp  the  foundations 
upon  which  the  metaphysics  of  interpretation 
rests.     The   human    value   of   this   practical 
attitude  does  not  by  itself  fully  reveal  the 
grounds  of  the  technical  theory  which  is  here 
in  question.     But  the  intimate  relations  be- 
tween theory  and  life  are  nowhere  more  pro- 
nounced than  in  this  case,  where  reason  and 
sentiment,  action  and  expression,  throw  light, 
each  upon  the  other,  as  is  hardly  anywhere 
else  the  case. 

1 1    JThe  attitude  of  the  will  which  Paul  found 

I  to  be  saving  in  its  power,  just  as,  to  his  mind, 

it  was  also  divine  in- its  origin,  was  the  atti- 

itude  of  Loyalt;3  Now  loyalty,  when  con- 
sidered from  within,  and  with  respect  to  its 
deepest  spirit,  is  not  the  affirmation  of  the 
will  to  live  of  which  Schopenhauer  spoke. 
And  loydty  is  also  not  the  denial  of  the  will 
^  to  live,  [it  is  a  positive  devotion  of  the  Self 
to  its  cause,3-a  devotion  as  vigorous,  as 
self-asserting,  as  articulate,  as  strenuous,  as 
Paul's  life  and  counsels  always  remained. 
The  apostle  himself  was  no  resigned  person. 

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THE    DOCTRINE    OF    SIGNS 

His  sacrifices  for  his  cause  were  constant,  and' 
were  eloquently  portrayed  in  his  own  burning  \  I 
words.  They  included  the  giving  of  what-j  ( 
ever  he  possessed.  But  they  never  included' 
the  negation  of  the  will,  the  plucking  out  of 
the  root  of  all  desire,  in  which  Gotama  Buddha 
found  salvation.  Paul  died  at  his  conver- 
sion; but  only  in  order  that  henceforth  the 
life  of  the  spirit  should  live  in  him  and  through 
him. 

X 

Now  this  third  attitude  of  the  will,  as  we 
found  in  dealing  with  the  whole  Christian 
doctrine  of  life,  has  in  any  caseits  disposition 
to  imagine,  and  also  practically  to  acknowl- 
edge as  real,  a  spiritual  realm,  —  an  universal 
and  divine  community??  Christian  theology,' ' ' 
in  its  traditional  forms,  was  a  natural  outcome 
of  the  effort  toVdefine  the  world  wherein  the  ,  \ 
loyal  will  can  find  both  its  expression  and  its 
opportunity?  We  have  not  now  to  consider 
the  religious  aspect  of  this  third  attitude  of 
the  will.     But  we  are  now  fully  prepared  to 

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y 


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THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

state  its  relation  to  the  metaphysical  prob- 
lems. All  the  threads  are  in  our  hands.  We 
have  only  to  weave  them  into  a  single  knot. 

As  a  reasonable  being,  when  once  I  have 
come  to  realize  the  meaning  of  my  dealings 
both  with  life  and  with  the  world,  the  first 
practical  principle,  as  well  as  the  first  theo- 
retical presupposition  of  my  philosophy  must 
be    this:     Whatever    my    purposes    or    my 
ideas,  —  whatever  will  to  live  incites  me  to 
create  and  to  beUeve,  whatever  reverses  of 
fortune  drive  me  back  upon  my  own  poor 
powers,  whatever  problems  baffle  me,  through 
their    complexity    and    my    ignorance,    one 
truth  stands  out  clear :  [Practically  I  cannot 
be  saved  alone ;  theoretically  speaking,  I  can- 
not find  or  even  define  the  truth  in  terms 
of  my  individual  experience,  without  taking 
account  of  my  relation  to  the  community  of 
those  who  know.     This  community,  then,  is 
real    whatever    is   real.     And    in    that   com- 
munity my  life  is  interpreted   When  viewed 
as  if  I  were  alone,  I,  the  individual,  am  not 
only  doomed  to  failure,  but  I  am  lost  in  folly. 

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THE   DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

The  "workings''  of  my  ideas  are  events  whose 
significance  I  cannot  even  remotely  estimate 
in   terms  of  their  momentary  existence,   or 
in  terms  of  my  individual  successes,  ^y  life 
means  nothing,  either  theoretically  or  practi- 
cally, unless  I  am  a  member  of  a  communit^J 
I  win  no  success  worth  having,  unless  it  is 
also  the  success  of  the  community  to  which 
I  essentially  and  by  virtue  of  my  real  relations 
to  the  whole  universe,  belong.     My  deeds  are 
not  done  at  all,  unless  they  are  indeed  done 
for  all  time,  and  are  irrevocable.     The  par- 
ticular  fortunes    upon  which    James  lays  so 
much  stress  are  not  even  particular,  unless 
they  consist  of  individual  events  which  either 
occur  or  do  not  occur.     Each  of  these  real 
events  has  therefore  a  being  which  lasts  to 
the  end  of  time,  and  a  value  which  concerns 
the  whole  universe. 

Such,  I  say,  is  the  principle,  at  once  theo- 
retical and  practical,  upon  which  my  philos- 
ophy must  depend.  This  principle  does  not 
itself  depend  upon  the  momentary  success  of 
any  individual  idea.     For  it  is  a  principle  in 

313 


<■ 


\ 


\i 


l\ 


) 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
terms  of  which  we  are  able  to  define  what- 
ever real  life  there  is,  while,  unless  this  prin- 
ciple itself  holds  true,  there  is  no  real  life  or 
real  world  in  which  we  can  find  success. 

XI 

Now  this  principle  is  one  which,  with  vari- 
ous dialectical  explanations,  I  have,  in  other 
essays  of  my  own,  repeatedly  defended.     And , 
as  I  have  said,  I  have  no  wish  whatever  to  re- 
peat, in  this  context,  my  own  previous  discus- 
sions. fThe  relation  of  this  essentially  social 
attitude  of  the  decisive  will  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  community,  leads  me  to  show  what  this 
general  and  underlying  attitude  of  the  social 
will  is,  by  mentioning,  as  I  pass,  and  by  way 
of  illustration,  that  most  familiar  and   most 
profoundly  metaphysical  of  the  problems  of 
common  sense,  the  problem :  What  reason  can 
any  one  of  us  give  for  holding  that  the  mind  of 
his  neighbor  is  real  at  all  ?     For  the  attitude 
of  will,  the  postulate,  the  resolution  which  any 
one  of  us  takes  when  he  says  to  his  fellow, 
"You  are  a  real  being,"  is  precisely  that  atti- 

314 


I 


■ 

II 


THE    DOC"  RINE    OF   SIGNS 

tude  which  our  metaphysical  thesis  advises  us 
to  take  towards  the  whole  world  when  it  tells 
us  to  say  to  the  world  :  "I  know  that  you  are 
real,  because  my  life  needs  and  finds  its  in- 
terpreter. (You,  O  World,  are  the  interpreta- 
tion of  my  existence/j 

At  all  events,  the  case  of  the  bases  of  our 
ordinary  social  knowledge  is  a  test  case  de- 
ciding the  whole  attitude  towards  life  and 
towards  truth  and  towards  the  universe. 


XII 

For  James,  as  you  have  already  seen,  my 
only  and,  to  his  mind,  my  suflScient  ground 
for  believing  in  my  fellow's  existence,  for 
"postulating  your  mind,"  is  an  argument^ 
from  analogy,  —  an  extension  of  the  inner  ^ 
life  of  my  already  known  self,  with  its  feeUngs, 
with  its  will,  and  with  the  workings  of  its 
ideas,  into  the  perceived  body  of  my  neighbor, 
whose  movements  and  expressions  resemble 
mine. 

Now,  as  a  fact,SJJiie  most  important  part 
of  my  knowledge  about  myself  is  based  upon 

315 


[ 


\ 


% 


) 


^ 


THE  PROBLEM  OF   CHRISTIANITY 

knowledge  that  I  have  derived  from  the  com- 
munity to  which  I  belong  In  particular, 
\  my  knowledge  about  the  socially  expressive 
'^movements  of  my  own  organism  is  largely 
derived  from  what  I  learn  through  the  testi- 
mony of  my  fellow-men.  Therefore  I  cannot 
use  the  analogy  of  our  externally  expressive 
movements  as  my  principal  reason  for  be- 
lieving in  the  reality  of  the  inner  life  of  my 
fellow-man,  because  I  am  very  largely  unable 
to  perceive  my  own  expressive  movements  in 
as  direct  a  way  as  is  that  in  which  I  perceive 
the  organism  and  the  movements  of  my 
fellow-man. 

For  instance,  the  appearance  of  my  fellow's 
countenance  is  to  me  a  sign  of  his  mind.  And 
signs  of  this  type  stand  in  the  front  rank  of 
those  facts  of  perception  upon  which  my 
customary  interpretation  of  his  mind  depends 
whenever  he  and  I  are  in  each  other's  presence. 

But  is  my  main  argument  for  the  thesis 
that  my  fellow's  face  expresses  his  mind,  — 
and  that  his  facial  expressions  are  evidences 
of  the  existence  of  his  mind,  —  an  argument 

316 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   SIGNS 

from  analogy  ?  Do  I  reason  thus  :  "  When  my 
face  looks  thus,  I  feel  so  and  so;  therefore, 
since  my  neighbor's  face  looks  thus,  it  is  fair 
to  reason  by  analogy  that  he  feels  so  and  so .?" 
How  utterly  foreign  to  our  social  common 
sense  would  be  this  particular  argument  from 
analogy  ! 

For,  as  a  fact,  I  know  very  little  about  my 
own  facial  expressions,  except  what  I  learn, 
if  indeed  I  learn  it  at  all,  through  accepting  as 
true  certain  reports  of  my  neighbors  regard- 
ing  these   facial    expressions.     I   can    indeed 
indirectly  perceive  my  own  face  by  looking 
in  the  mirror.     But  I  thus  learn  hardly  any- 
thing of  importance  to  me  about  what  my 
own  changes  of  facial  expression  are.     I  have 
spent  years  of  my  life  interpreting  the  signs 
which  I  read  as  I  look  at  the  countenances  of 
other   men.     But   when   have   I   said   to   my 
neighbor.    ^'Come,  let  us  look  in  the  glass 
together,  so  that,   observing  how  my  facial 
expression  varies  with  my  state  of  mind,  I  can 
learn  to  judge  by  the  analogy  of  my  own  coun- 
tenance what  your  changes  of  countenance 

317 


I 


'A 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

probably  mean  ?  "  To  **  postulate  your  mind  " 
upon  such  a  basis  would  be  a  form  of  solemn 
fooling. 

The  case  is  trivial,  but  typical  for  the  way 
in  which  we  interpret  the  usual  signs  of  his 
mind  which  our  neighbor  gives  to  us.  In 
large  part,  since  I  never  normally  view  my 
own  organism  in  a  perspective  which  is  closely 
analogous  to  the  perspective  in  which  I  con- 
stantly perceive  the  body  and  the  movements 
of  my  fellow-man.  My  most  important  knowl- 
edge about  my  own  expressive  movements 
comes  to  me  at  second  hand.  I  learn  how  my 
own  movements  appear  through  the  report 
of  others. 

Thus,  then,  I  first  beUeve  that  my  fellow 
has  a  mind.  As  part  or  as  consequence  of 
this  behef,  I  accept  his  testimony  about  how 
the  movements  of  my  organism  seem  when 
they  are  perceived  by  another  man.  As  a 
result,  I  learn  indirectly,  and  by  the  cir- 
cuitous route  that,  so  to  speak,  passes  through 
my  neighbor's  mind,  precisely  the  most  sig- 
nificant of  the  analogies  between  my  neigh- 

318 


1 


I 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   SIGNS 

bor's   expressive    movements    and    my    own. 
Yet  these  analogies  are  supposed,  by  James,  _ 
and  by  the  prevalent  theory,  to  constitute 
my  main  evidence  that  my  neighbor  has  a 

mind  at  all ! 

It  would  be  hard  to  mention  an  instance  of 
a  more  artificial  doctrine  than  this  prevail- 
ing   opinion    of    philosophers    regarding    the  <^ 
bases  of  our  social  consciousness.     Yet  this 
is  the  very  doctrine  which  James  advances 
as  a  typical  illustration  of  his  own  radical 
empiricism.     What  I,  as  an  individual,  never 
experience  at  all,  — namely,  precisely  those 
analogies  between   my  own  doings  and  my 
neighbor's  outward  behavior  which  are  socially 
most    important,    are    named    by    James    as 
furnishing  my   sole  reason  for  "postulating 
your  mind." 

XIII 

J    'I       Why,   then,   do  I   indeed   postulate  your 

\   mind  ? 

^  -hjTpostulate  your  mind,  first,  because,  when 
you  address  me,  by  word  or  by  gesture,  you 

319 


\ 


I 

j 


\ 


1 

J- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

arouse  in  me  ideas  which,  by  virtue  of  their 
contrast  with  my  ideas,  and  by  virtue  of 
their  novelty  and  their  unexpectedness,  I 
know  to  be  not  any  ideas  of  my  own.  J 

Hereupon  I  first  try,  however  I  can,  to 
interpret  these  ideas  which  are  not  mine. 
In  case  you  are  in  fact  the  source  of  these 
new  ideas  of  mine,  I  fail  to  find  any  success 
in  my  efforts  to  interpret  these  ideas  as  past 
ideas  of  my  own  which  I  had  forgotten,  or 
as  inventions  of  my  own,  or  as  otherwise 
belonging  to  the  internal  realm  which  I  have 
already  learned  to  interpret  as  the  realm  of 
the  self. 

Hereupon  I  make  one  hypothesis.  It  is, 
in  its  substance, /the  fundamental  hypothesis 
of  all  our  social  life.  It  is  the  hypothesis  that 
these  new  ideas  which  your  words  and  deeds 
have  suggested  to  me  actually  possess  an 
interpretation.  They  have  an  interpreter. 
They  are  interpreted/  This  hypothesis  simply 
means  that  there  exists  some  idea  or  train  of 
ideas,  which,  if  it  were  now  present  within 
my  own  train  of  consciousness,  would  inter- 

320 


I 


•fs 


THE    DOCTRINE   OF   SIGNS 

pret  what  I  now  cannot  interpret.     This  in- 
terpreter wouIl  mediate  between  the  ne^-        -^s 
which  your  deeds  have  suggested  to  me,  anv' 
the  trains  of  ideas  which  I  already  call  my 
own.     That  is,  this  interpreter,  if  he  fully  did 
his  work,  would  compare  all  these  ideas,  and 
would  both  observe  and  express  wherein  lay 
their  contrast  and  its  meaning.     My  hypoth- 
esis is  that  such  an  interpreter  of  the  novel   \ 
ideas  which  your  expressive  acts  have  aroused 
in  me,  actually  exists. 

Now   such    an    interpreter,    mediating   be- 
tween two  contrasting  ideas  or  sets  of  ideas, 
and  making  clear  their  contrasts,  their  mean- 
ing, and  their  mutual  relations,  would  be,  by 
hypothesis,  a  mind.     It  would  not  be  my  own 
present  mind ;   for  by  myself  alone  I  actually 
fail  to  interpret  the  idea^  which  your  deeds  ^ 
have  aroused  in  me.     And  these  ideas  which 
your  doings  have  aroused  in  me  are  simply 
not    my    own.     Now    this    hypothetical    in- 
terpreter is  what  I  mean  by  your  self,  precisely 
m  so  far  as  I  suppose  you  to  be  now  communi- 
cating your  own  ideas  to  me.     You  are  the 

VOL.  II  —  T  321 


r 


\ 


^ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

real  interpreter  of  the  ideas  which  your  deeds 
suggest  to  me.  That  is  what  I  mean  by  your 
existence  as  an  '*  eject." 

iTte  reason,  then,  for  "postulating  your 
mind"  is  that  the  ideas  which  your  words  and 
movements  have  aroused  within  me  are  not 
my  own  ideas,  and  cannot  be  interpreted  in 
terms  of  my  own  ideas,  while  I  actually  hold, 
as  the  fundamental  hypothesis  of  my  social 
consciousness,  that  all  contrasts  of  ideas  have 
a  real  interpretation  and  are  interpretejTj 

XIV 

Our  illustration  has  carried  us  at  once 
into  the  mazes  of  our  problematic  social  hfe 
together.  But  the  case  is  a  typical  case. 
We  have  but  to  view  it  in  its  principle,  and 
it  shows  what  attitude  of  the  will  is  the  only 
decisive  one  in  dealing  with  the  interpretation 
of  experience. 

You  are  not  a  mere  extension  by  analogy 
of  my  own  will  to  live.  I  do  not,  for  the  sake 
merely  of  such  analogy,  vivify  your  perceived 
organism.  \You  are  an  example  of  the  principle 

322 


1    » 


/ 
I  ^  ^ 


r 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF   SIGNS 

whose  active  recognition  lies  at  the  basis  of  my 
only  reasonable  view  of  the  universe.     As  I  treat!  i 
you,  so  ought  I  to  deal  with  the  universe.     As  l\ 
interpret  the  universe,  so,  too,  in  principle,  shoulS 
I  interpret  youl  ' 

We  have  no  ground  whatever  for  believing 
that  there  is  any  real  world  except  the  ground 
furnished  by  our  experience,  and  by  the  fact 
that,  in  addition  to  our  perceptions  and  our 
conceptions,  we  have  problems  upon  our 
hands  which  need  interpretation.  [Qur  funda- 
mental postulate  is  :  The  world  is  the  interprc'-i)^- 
tation  of  the  problems  which  it  presentt^^  If  you . 
deny  this  principle,  you  do  so  only  by  present- 
ing, as  Bergson  does,  some  other  interpretation 
as  the  true  one.  But  thus  you  simply  reaffirm 
the  principle  that  the  world  has  an  interpreter. 
[Using  this  principle,  in  your  ordinary  social 
life,  you  postulate  your  fellow-man  as  the  in- 
terpreter of  the  ideas  which  he  awakens  in 
your  mind,  and  which  are  not  your  own  ideasp 
The  same  principle,  applied  to  our  social  ex- 
perience of  the  physical  world,  determines  our 
ordinary  interpretations  of  nature  and  guides 

323 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

our  natural  science.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
physical  world  is  an  object  known  to  the  com- 
munity, and  through  interpretation.  The 
same  principle,  applied  to  our  memories  and 
to  our  expectations,  gives  us  our  view  of  the 
world  of  time,  with  all  its  infinite  wealth  of 
successive  acts  of  interpretation. 

In  all  these  special  instances,  the  apphca- 
tion  of  this  principle  defines  for  us  some  form 
or  grade  of  community,  and  teaches  us  wherein 
Hes  the  true  nature,  the  form,  the  real  unity, 
and  the  essential  life  of  this  community. 

Our  Doctrine  of  Signs  extends  to  the  whole 
world  the  same  fundamental  principle,  ^he 
World  is  the  Community.  The  world  contains 
its  own  interpreter!!  Its  processes  are  infinite 
in  their  temporal  varieties.  But  their  in- 
terpreter, the  spirit  of  this  universal  com- 
munity, —  never  absorbing  varieties  or  per- 
mitting them  to  blend,  —  compares  and, 
through  a  real  life,  interprets  them  all. 

The  attitude  of  will  which  this  principle 
expresses,  is  neither  that  of  the  affirmation 
nor  that  of  the  denial  of  what  Schopenhauer 

324 


1 


( 


THE   DOCTlllNE   OF   SIGNS 
nicaiil   by   U.c  will   lo  live.     It  is   the  atti- 
tude   wl.ioli    first   ex.)re.s.sc.s    itself    by    sayin- 
"Alone  I  iun  lost,  and  am  worse  than  nothing! 
I  iHOci   a  counsellor,  I    need  my  co.nmunily. 
Inler,,rel    me.     Let  me  join  in  this  interpre- 
tahoii.     Let  there  be  I  he  commuuity.     This 
aloi.e  is  hfe.     This  alone  is  salvation.     This 
alone  is  real."     This  is  at  once  an  attitude  of 
the  will  and  an  assertion  whose  denial  refutes 
ilself.     For  if  then;  i,  no  interpreter,  there  is 
no  interiMclation.     And  if  there  is  no  inter- 
prelalion,  there  is  no  world  whatever. 

In  its  daily  form  as  the  principle  of  our 
social  common  sense,  this  attitude  of  the  will 
inspires  whatever  is  reasonable  about  our 
worldly  business  and  our  scientific  inquiry, 
^^or  all  such  business  and  incjuiry  arc  in  and 
for  and  of  the  comnmnity,  or  else  are'vanity;  ' 

iK't«iiiilLcst..%»'a]iis^altitude_of  the  will 
^t^h."^']!:  "i"^''  ^'""'  knew  s^s  Cliarity,  and"" 
as  the  life  in'  andlhiough 'thelpiri'roTThr 
Communilv.  '  '  '""""• *-^ 

Siich>.Lhcn.  rs.ihcj-ejation  of  the  Christian 
will  J,q  J,he  rcalworld.-  -----^J: 

325 


/ 


\  I 


XV 


THE  mSTORICAL  AND  THE  ESSENTIAL 


LECTURE  XV 

THE  HISTORICAL  AND  THE  ESSENTIAL 

TN    the    !ourth    lecture    of    his    book    on 
•■-    "Christologies,    Ancient    and    Modern," 
Professor  Sanday  says,  of  the  development 
which  was  introduced  into  theology  by  Ritschl : 
*' There  is  a  great  deal  that  is  very  wholesome 
in  the  movement  out  of  which  this  development 
has  sprung.     It  arose  from,  and  has  been  sus- 
tained by,  a  great  desire  to  look  at  the  reahty  of 
things,  to  put  aside  conventions  and  to  get  into 
close  and  Hving  contact  with  things  as  they  are. 
It  came  to  be  seen  that  .  .  .  as  a  complete  phi- 
losophy of  rehgion  Hegehanism  was  too  purely 
intellectual.     It  did  not  correspond  to  the  true 
nature  of  religion,  in  which  the  emotions  and  the 
will  are  involved  quite  as  much  as  the  intellect." 


The  criticism  of  the  rehgious  philosophy  of 
Hegel  which  these  words  summarily  indicate, 
IS  further  expressed  by  what  Professor  Sanday 


329 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

says  about  the  famous  words  in  which  David 
Frederic  Strauss  stated  his  own  version  of 
the  Hegehan  position  regarding  the  person 
and  work  of  Christ. 

Strauss,  as  you  remember,  said:  '*As  con- 
ceived of  in  an  individual,  a  God-man,  the 
attributes  and  functions  which  the  Church 
doctrine  ascribes  to  Christ  contradict  each 
other;  in  the  idea  of  the  Race  they  agree 
together.  Humanity  is  the  union  of  the  two 
natures,  God  become  man,  the  Infinite  Spirit 
externaHzed  as  finite,  and  the  finite  spirit 
remembering  its  infinitude." 

Professor  Sanday  makes  the  comment : 
**  Strauss  was  driven  to  this  substitution  of 
the  idea  for  the  Person  by  his  assumption 
that  the  idea  never  reaches  its  full  expression 
in  the  individual,  but  only  in  the  race.  It  is, 
however,  not  at  all  surprising  that,  after  re- 
ducing Christianity  to  this  shadowy  semblance 
of  itself,  he  should  end  by  throwing  it  over 
altogether." 

The  criticism  of  Hegel's  version  of  Chris- 
tianity which   Professor   H.  R.  Mackintosh, 

330 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

of  Edinburgh,  expresses  in  the  course  of  the 
historical  section  of  his  recent  book  on  "The 
Doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Jesus  Christ,"  is 
longer  and  is  also  more  expHcitly  hostile  to 
Hegel's  whole  religious  philosophy  than  are 
the  few  words  which  I  have  just  cited  from 
Professor  Sanday.  Professor  Sanday  —  I 
ought  to  add  —  does  not  intend  his  own  re- 
mark as  any  complete  characterization  of  the 
position  either  of  Hegel  or  of  Strauss. 

Professor     Mackintosh     says,     concerning 
the  Hegehan  view:    "Christianity  receives" 
(according  to  Hegel)  "absolute  rank,  but  at 
the  cost  of  its  tie  with  history.     For  only  the 
world-process  as  a  whole,  and  no  single  point 
or  person  in  it,  can  be  the  true  manifestation 
of  the  Absolute."  .  .  .  "Thus,  when   Hegel 
has  waved  his  wand,  and  uttered  his  dialectical 
and  all-decisive  formula,  a  change  comes  over 
the  spirit  of  the  behever's  dream  ;  everything 
appears   to   be   as   Christian   as   before,   yet 
instinctively  we  are  aware  that  nothing  spe- 
cifically Christian  is  left."  .  .  .  "When  once 
the  Gospel  has  been  severed  from  a  historic 

331 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

person,  and  identified  with  a  complex  of 
metaphysical  ideas,  what  it  ought  to  be  called 
is  scarcely  worth  discussion;  that  it  is  no 
longer  Christianity,  is  clear."  .  .  .  "Sooner 
or  later,  then,  some  one  was  bound  to  speak 
out,  and  expose  the  hollow  and  precarious 
alliance  which  had  been  proclaimed  between 
the  Christian  faith  and  dialectic  pantheism. 
The  word  which  broke  the  spell  came  from 
Strauss." 

Professor  Mackintosh  hereupon  quotes  from 
Strauss  the  further  statement:  "The  Idea 
loves  not  to  pour  all  its  fulness  into  one  ex- 
ample, in  jealousy  towards  all  the  rest.  Only 
the  race  answers  to  the  Idea";  and  adds,  in  a 
foot-note,  "This  formula  has  made  a  pro- 
found impression."  And  Professor  Mackin- 
tosh continues :  "It  ought  to  be  clear,  by  this 
time,  that  the  proposed  identification  of  the 
Christian  faith  with  the  ontological  theory 
that  God  and  man  are  one,  —  God  the  essence 
of  man,  man  the  actuality  of  God,  —  is  an 
utterly  hopeless  enterprise,  which  the  scien- 
tific historian   cannot    take    seriously.  .  .  ." 

332 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 

"The  truth  is  that  the  very  idea  of  religion  as 
consisting  in  personal  fellowship   with   God, 
had  faded  from  Strauss 's  mind,  and  with  its 
disappearance  went  also  in  large  measure  the 
power    to    sympathize    with,    or    appreciate, 
essential   Christian  piety  as  it  existed  from 
the  first.  .  .  ."  "In  general,  it  may  be  con- 
cluded that  Hegelianism  tended  to  commit  a 
grave  offence  against  history  by  construing 
Christianity  as  a  system  of  ideas  which  is 
intelligible    and   effective    apart   from   Jesus 
Christ." 


n 

I  have  quoted  these  two  expressions  of 
opinion,  the  one  from  Professor  Sanday,  and 
the  other  from  Professor  Mackintosh,  in 
order  to  introduce  the  issue  which  in  this  lec- 
ture I  have  yet  to  face.  I  shall  try  to  meet 
that  issue  as  directly  as  I  can. 

We  have  not,  in  this  discussion,  first  ap- 
proached  our  problem  of  Christianity  from  the 
side  of  speculation,  and  then  attempted  to 
find  a  way  of  identifying  a  group  of  abstract 

333 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ontological  conceptions  with  those  religious 
convictions  which  have  been  most  prominent 
in  the  history  of  the  Christian  religion.  On 
the  contrary,  my  sketch  of  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  life,  and  of  the  ideas  which  seem  to  me 
to  be  essential  to  that  doctrine,  made  use  of 
facts  which  belong  to  our  common  ethical  and 
religious  experience.  We  began  with  these 
facts.  The  metaphysical  problems  were  kept 
in  reserve  until  this  more  empirical  part  of 
the  work  was  completed. 

My  hearer,  if  he  kindly  takes  any  interest 
in  the  present  account  of  our  problem,  may 
indeed  question  whether  those  Christian  ideas 
which  I  selected  for  discussion  were  rightly 
chosen.  He  may  well  insist  that,  in  emphasiz- 
ing certain  aspects  of  Christianity,  I  have 
either  ignored  or  slighted  'other  aspects  to 
which  tradition  has  assigned  the  highest 
prominence.  Such  a  criticism  is,  in  part, 
obviously  warranted.  I  have  deliberately 
ignored  much  that  tradition  regards  as  the 
head  of  the  corner.  My  hearer  has  a  right 
to  ask  how  my  estimate  of  the  essence  of 

334 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

Christianity  stands  related  to  the  historical 
faith ;  and  he  may  think,  if  that  seems  to  him 
just,  that  my  views  have  involved  "an  utterly 
hopeless  enterprise,  which  the  scientific  his- 
torian cannot  take  seriously."  I  cheerfully 
accept  the  risk  of  such  a  judgment  upon  my 
study  of  our  problem  of  Christianity. 

But  I  do  not  believe  that  the  foregoing 
lectures  can  justly  be  accused  of  attempting 
to  "identify  the  Gospel"  with  any  inere 
"complex  of  metaphysical  ideas." 

Such   Christian   ideas   as   I   have  tried   to 
interpret,  I  certainly  did  not  invent.     They 
found   me.     I   did   not   devise   them.     They 
have  led  us,  indeed,  into  the  presence  of  the 
most  intricate  metaphysical    problems;    but 
no  metaphysician  ever  discovered  them.     Nor 
are   they  merely  a   "complex  of   metaphys- 
ical ideas."     They  come  to  us  from  human 
life,  from  the  life  both  of  the  Christian  Church 
Itself,  and  of  those  communities,  secular  or 
religous,  which   the  noblest  forms  of  loyalty 
have  informed,  and  have  redeemed,  precisely 
in  so  far  as  men  have  yet  learned  to  live  the 

335 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


life   of   the   universal   brotherhood.     For   us 

the  metaphysical  meaning  of  these  ideas  has 

occupied,  in  our  discussion,  the  second  place. 

Now  I  am  indeed  far  from  supposing  that  my 

fragmentary  arguments  and  illustrations  have 

exhausted  the  meaning  of  those  Christian  ideas 

which  I  have  selected  for  discussion.     I  have 

been  trying  to  tell  what  I  see,  and  no  more. 

Whoever  finds  in  the  Christian  gospel  meanings 

which  tradition  has  emphasized,  and  which  I 

have  ignored,  is  welcome  to  put  me  in  my  place 

by  whatever  authority  or  reason  he  is  able  to 

employ.     And  since  I  am  neither  apologist,  nor 

assailant,   but  am  only,  with  the  aid  of  my 

"broken  light,"  an  interpreter,  I  can  feel  no 

disappointment  with  my  critic,  and  can  find  no 

painful  defeat  in  the  exposure  of  my  inadequacy 

as  an  expounder  of  historical  Christianity. 


Ill 

Scholarly  opinion  has,  in  recent  decades, 
undergone  many  disappointing  changes  re- 
lating to  the  history  of  Christian  origins. 
The  goal  of  scientific  agreement,  both  regard- 

336 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

ing  the  founder  of  Christianity,  and  regarding 
the  life  and  history  of  the  Christian  Church 
in  the  apostolic  age,  is  very  remote.  And  I 
have  no  right  to  an  opinion  about  problems 
of  historical  criticism. 

Hence   I   have  constantly   tried,   in   these 
discussions,  to  avoid  hazarding  any  personal 
impressions    of    mine    about    what    actually 
took  place  on  earth  at  the  moment  when  the 
Christian  religion  originated.     That  there  were 
the  visions  of  the  risen  Lord,  we  know.     I 
have  no  theory  regarding  how  they  originated. 
I  do  not  know  to  what  they  were  due.     We 
are  sure  that  what  was  called  the  presence 
of  the  Spirit  in  the  Church  displayed  itself  in 
the  ways  which  Paul  describes ;  for  the  writer 
of  the  greatest  of  the  words  in  the  Pauline 
epistles  spoke  to  those  to  whom  these  experi- 
ences were  present  facts.     The  picture  of  the 
typical  Pauline  Church,  and  its  faith,  as  the 
epistles  present  this  picture,  bears  witness  to 

• 

Its  own  essential  human  meaning.  Further- 
more, we  possess  that  body  of  sayings  and  of 
parables  which  early  tradition  attributed   to 


VOL.  II  —  Z 


337 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  founder.  I  am  disposed  to  read  these  say- 
ings as  simple-mindedly  as  I  can.  They  do  not 
appear  to  me  to  constitute  an  expression  of  the 
whole  Christian  doctrine  of  life.  They  seem 
not  to  be  intended  as  such  a  complete  expres- 
sion. I  have  tried  to  indicate  some  few  ways 
in  which  these  teachings,  attributed  to  the 
founder,  are  most  obviously  related  to  the  subse- 
quent development  of  the  main  Christian  ideas. 
The  founder's  life  I  must  leave  those  to  portray 
who  have  a  right  to  judge  the  documents. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  I  in  no  wise 
imagine,  and  have  nowhere  suggested,  that 
Paul,  in  any  just  sense,  was  the  real  founder 
of  Christianity.  The  Christian  community 
into  which  Paul  entered,  and  whose  life  he,  as 
convert,  so  vastly  furthered,  this  —  I  have 
said  —  this,  together  with  its  spirit,  is  the 
true  founder  of  Christianity.  ^ 

Such  is  the  meagre  foundation  of  historical 
fact  by  means  of  which  I  have  ventured  to 
justify  the  view  regarding  the  Christian  ideas 
which  I  have  now  laid  before  you.  It  is  only 
my   comment   upon   these   ideas   which   has 

338 


HISTORICAL  AND  ESSENTIAL 
brought  us  into  the  region  where,  as  a  student 
of  philosophy,  I  have  some  right  to  form  and 
to  express  an  opinion.  In  stating  this  opin- 
ion, I  have  of  course  been  obliged  to  inter- 
pret some  of  those  larger  historical  connections 
which  even  the  layman  in  all  matters  of  his- 
torical  scholarship  has  a  right,  I  believe,  to 
regard  as  topics  of  general  knowledge. 

The  thesis  that  the  religious  experience  of 
the    earliest    Christian    community,    and    in 
particular  of  the  Pauline  churches,  lies,  as  a 
deeper  motive,  at  the  basis  of  the  whole  de- 
velopment and  dogmatic  formulation  of  the 
doctrine  of    the  person  of    Christ,  is  not  a 
new  thesis.     But  in  the  form  in  which  I  have 
stated  it,  this  assertion  gets  its  most  impor- 
tant meaning,  in  my  own  mind,  through  an 
interpretation  of  the  nature  of  communities. 
This  interpretation,  as  you  now  know,  has  an 
aspect  which  I  have  formulated  in  terms  of 
human  experience.     It  has  also  its  technically 
metaphysical    aspect.     To    insist    upon    this 
view  of  the  nature  of  the  community,  and  to 
develop   the  consequences  that  follow   upon 

339 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

such  a  view,  these  enterprises  have  constituted 
the  novelty,  if  there  be  any  novelty,  in  my 
study  of  the  essence  of  Christianity.  These 
matters,  as  I  believe,  have  not  always  been 
seen  in  the  right  perspective.  I  have  done 
what  I  could  to  make  them  plain. 

Now  that  my  case  has  been  stated,  any  one 
who  holds  opinions  analogous  to  those  of 
Professor  H.  R.  Mackintosh  might  still  urge 
upon  me  this  question:  "Is  the  fragment 
of  traditional  Christian  doctrine  which,  in 
your  own  way,  you  interpret  and  defend, 
worthy  to  be  called  a  rehgion  at  all?  And 
if  it  is  a  religion,  is  this  religion  Christian  ? " 

A  plain  question  needs  a  plain  answer.  I 
feel  a  great  indifference  to  the  use  of  names  in 
such  regions.  I  am  anxious  to  see  the  rela- 
tions of  the  things  that  are  named.  So  long 
as  only  technical  theological  formulas  are  in 
question,  I  do  not  in  the  least  care  whether 
this  or  that  theologian  calls  me  a  Christian  or 
not.  But  let  me  attempt  one  more  mode  of 
making  clear  the  historical  rights  of  my  whole 
account  of  the  essence  of  Christianity. 

340 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 


IV 

One  of  the  best  ways  of  understanding  our 
own  religious  ideas  is  to  compare  them,  when 
we  can,  with  those  of  some  representative  and 
highly   trained   Oriental   mind.     When    inti- 
mate and  practical  religious  interests  are  in 
question,  such  comparison  is  most  effectively 
made  through  conversation  with  an  Oriental 
friend,  face  to  face.     For  a  man  speaks  better 
than  a  book.     Many  of  us  will  recall  opportu- 
nities for  personal  meetings  with  men  trained 
in    civilizations   remote    from    our    own,    as 
amongst  the  most  instructive  of  our  glimpses 
of   what   our   own    religion    means    to    our- 
selves.    The  faith  of  our  childhood,  the  reli- 
gion of  our  social  order,  becomes  for  the  first 
time  clear  to  our  consciousness  when  we  try, 
at  a  moment  of  chance  intimacy,  to  convey 
its  deeper  import  to  a  mind  that  has  been  a 
total  stranger  to  our  own. 

Now  just  as  mutual  remoteness  of  our 
present  lives,  when  we  are  contemporaries  one 
of  another,  sometimes  helps  an  Oriental  com- 

341 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

panion  and  myself  to  understand  each  his  own 
faith  better  when  we  take  counsel  together,  — 
even  so  the  attainment  of  a  new  understand- 
ing of  my  faith  might  be  accomplished  for  me, 
as  one  may  imagine,  if  I  were  permitted  to 
converse  with  fellow-men  belonging,  not  only 
to  a  distant  civilization,  but  also  to  a  distant 
century.     How  precious  for  our  appreciation, 
not  only  of  antiquity  but  of  ourselves,  it  would 
be  if,  escaping  from  the  flood  of  time,  we  could 
talk  over  the  essence  of  Christianity  with  an 
earnest  and  thoughtful  Christian  of  the  apos- 
tolic age,  —  not  with  an  apostle,  but  simply 
with  a  convert  whose  personal  experience  was 
deep  and  genuine. 

For  my  present  purpose,  the  fiction  —  the 
arbitrary  fancy,  that  such  converse  across 
the  centuries  might  take  place  —  has  one 
very  special  and  limited  interest. 

I  have  stated  a  thesis  concerning  the  essence 
of  Christianity.  I  should  understand  that 
thesis,  no  doubt,  better,  if  indeed  I  were  able 
to  converse,  in  some  fictitious  realm,  with  a 
Pauline  Christian,  —  a  member  of  one  of  the 

342 


i 


HISTORICAL   AND   ESSENTIAL 
apostolic  churches.     Let   me   try,   in   a  few 
words,  to  make  such  a  fiction  momentarily 
intelligible  to  you. 

It  is  easy  to  do  this,  I  think,  without  tres- 
passing upon  any  of  the  sacred  places  or  mem- 
ories of  early  Christian  history.  My  sole  in- 
tent is  to  furnish  a  test  of  the  degree  to  which 
the  account  of  the  Christian  ideas  upon  which 
I  have  insisted  does  furnish  a  just  view  of  the 
essence  of  Christianity. 

We  have  to  compare  what  I  take  to  be 
essential  with  what  was,  at  all  events  in  the 
Pauline  churches  and,  for  a  time,  historical 
Christianity.     It  would  be  useless,  even  were 
it  possible,  for  me  to  make  this  comparison 
by   means   of   any   analysis   of   the   Pauline 
Christology.     And  I  could  gain  nothing  by 
any  poor  effort  of  mine  to  amplify  the  picture 
which  the  best  known  of  the  epistles  have 
left  in  the  minds  of  all  of  us.     Besides,  I  desire 
to  bring  the  essential  and  the  historical  to- 
gether in  our  minds,  at  this  point,  only  for  the 
sake  of  indicating  a  few  very  general  relations 
of  both  of   them   to  our  modern   problems. 

343 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

My  fiction  must  therefore  illustrate  large 
and  abstract  principles.  It  must  also  sug- 
gest the  significance  of  certain  very  concrete 
religious  experiences.  Yet  it  must  do  this 
without  leading  us  into  any  maze  of  historical 
details.  And  it  must  aid  me  to  state  my  own 
case,  and  to  show  you  what  I  suppose  to  be 
the  situation  which  the  modern  mind  has  to 
face  when  we  estimate  the  Christian  ideas, 
not  only  in  the  light  of  human  nature  and  of 
history,  but  also  in  their  relation  to  the  most 
abstruse  problems  of  metaphysics.  You  will 
permit  me  the  freedom  of  construction  which 
is  needed  for  just  such  a  purpose. 


Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  some  highly 
trained  Greek,  —  as  learned  in  philosophy  as 
an  extended  sojourn  in  Athens,  and  as  the 
training  of  any  of  the  schools  of  his  time, 
could  make  him,  had  been  converted  by  Paul, 
had  then  for  some  years  been  a  member  of 
whatever  Pauhne  church  you  please.  I  have 
in  mind  no  man  whose  name  the  Acts,  or  the 

344 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 

Epistles,  or  the  legends  of  later  days,  have  pre- 
served to  us.  I  am  thinking  of  no  famous 
saint,  and  of  no  one  whose  earlier  hfe  as  a 
philosopher,  or  whose  later  devotion  as  a 
Christian,  became  a  matter  of  record.  As  I 
now  shall  feign,  my  Greek  of  the  first  century 
was  one  to  whom  the  ancient  cultivation  had 
made  the  highest  appeal  which  it  could  make 
to  the  deeply  religious  mind  of  an  ingenious 
child  of  his  age. 

Later,  at  the  time  of  his  conversion,  my 
hero  heard  the  message  that  Paul  brought  to 
the  Galatians,  to  the  Corinthians,  —  to  the 
other  best-known  Pauline  churches.     There- 
after, quickened,  made  a  new  creature,  our 
convert  entered  into  the  life  of  his  own  Chris- 
tian community  with  all  the  fervor,  the  love, 
the  patience,  and  the  hope  which  the  apostle 
had  taught   him  to  know.     With  the  saints 
that  were  of  his  company,  he  rejoiced  in  the 
gifts  of  the  spirit ;    he  awaited  longingly  the 
last   great    change,    and    the    return    of   the 
heavenly  man  whose  death  had  saved  him. 
Our  hero  treasured  up  and  pondered  long  the 

845 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

apostle's  words  as  various  epistles,  eagerly 
copied  and  transmitted  from  hand  to  hand 
and  from  church  to  church,  brought  them  to 
his  knowledge.  And  all  this  faith  of  the 
Church  he  interpreted  with  the  clearness  that 
his  previous  philosophical  training  had  made 

possible. 

And  then,  after  years  enough  had  passed  to 
fill  his  soul  completely  with  the  full  vision  of 
the  salvation  of  the  whole  world,  —  suddenly, 
in  the  fulness  of  grace,  at  the  height  of  his 
own  powers  of  mind,  in  the  midst  of  his  Ufe 
of  service,  — he  fell  asleep,  —  whether  at 
some  moment  of  local  persecution  and  of  mar- 
tyrdom, in  blessed  fulfilment  of  his  dearest 
earthly  desires,  I  know  not. 

So  much  my  fiction  first  in  outUne  sketches. 
But  hereupon  I  shall  imagine  a  great  change. 
This  is  not  the  change  which  Christian  hope, 
in  the  mind  of  a  member  of  a  PauUne  church, 
contemplated.  The  fictitious  change  shall 
be  this  :  From  centuries  of  dreamless  slumber, 
our  Pauhne  Christian  awakes  in  this  modern 
world  of  ours.     He  retains,  or  soon  again  re- 

346 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

sumes,  a  perfect  memory  of  all  his  former  life, 
with  its  hopes,  its  rehgion,  its  faith,  and  its 
opinions  regarding  things  on  earth  and  in 
heaven.  He  awakes  with  the  full  conscious- 
ness of  a  mature  and  earnest  Pauhne  Christian, 
but  with  no  faintest  ray  of  knowledge,  at  the 
moment  when  he  returns  to  life,  concerning 
the  entire  intervening  history  of  mankind. 
He  awakes,  moreover,  with  the  full  intel- 
lectual equipment,  with  the  ingenuity,  and  the 
thoughtfulness  which  his  early  training  as  a 
Greek  philosopher  had  bred  in  him  before  his 
conversion. 

And  the  task  which  some  higher  power  sets 
him  in  our  own  day  is  the  task  of  entering 
our  world  under  conditions  which  are  first  to 
train  him  in  the  lore  of  our  modern,  of  our 
secular,  of  our  scientific,  of  our  pohtical,  Hfe, 
before  his  new  education  shall  be  allowed  to 
bring  him  into  contact  with  any  form,  or 
opinion,  or  tradition  of  the  modern  Christian 
Church. 

He  is  to  learn  about  what  Christianity  now 
means  only  after  he  has  first  been  permitted, 

347 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

and  stimulated,  to  become  a  highly  trained 
product  of  the  worldly  cultivation  of  our  age. 
In  ancient  times,  before  Paul's  message  told 
him  of  the  power  of  grace,  he  was  a  philosopher. 
And  even  so,  in  the  modern  world,  he  has  every 
opportunity  which  scientific  study  and  which 
all  forms  of  secular  learning  can  furmsh  to 
him,  within  the  time  allowed  for  his  new  career. 
The' result  is  to  reawaken  and  train  his  phi- 
losophical interest ;    and   to  prepare   him  to 
master  our  problems,  -  except  for  one  great 
Umitation.     Namely,  until   this    new   course 
of  preUminary  training  has  been  duly  com- 
pleted by  the  powers  who  have  his  new  life 
in  their  control,  he  is  allowed  to  learn  nothing 
of  our  problem  of   Christianity,   nothing  of 
what  dogmas  the  Councils  of  the  Church  ever 
defined,  nothing  of  the  past  relations  between 
Christianity  and  the  philosophers,  -  in  brief, 
nothing  that  lets  him  know  what  any  form  of 
Christianity  has  been,  except  the  one  Christian 
faith  under  whose  spell  he  Uved  of  old,  be- 
fore the  long  sleep  overtook  him. 

We  are  feigning  indeed  an  artificial  course 

348 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

for  the  new  education  to  which  our  reawak- 
ened Christian  is  to  be  subject.     Yet,  if  you 
choose  to  aid  my  halting  imagination  a  httle,  I 
beUeve  that   you  can  even   picture,  yes,   if 
you  choose,  can  name,  the  places  in  our  modern 
world  where  the  ingenious  and  potent  teachers, 
to  whom  charge  over  our  hero  has  been  com- 
mitted, are  able  to  keep  their  scholar  long 
secluded  from  all  knowledge  of  the  Christian 
religion  as  it  now  exists,   and   of  Christian 
history  as  it  has  run  its  course  since  the  first 
century    passed    away.     And    yet,    in    such 
places  (I  leave  you  to  name  them),  —  these 
guides  of  our  returned   Greek,  through  due 
censorship  of  what  he  is  permitted  to  read, 
and  through  a  control  of  the  things  and  of  the 
people  that  he  is  permitted  to  see,  allow  him 
to  gratify  a  vast  range  of  modern  curiosity; 
yet  keep  him,  during  his  period  of  preparation, 
unaware    of   the    very   existence    of   a   post- 
Pauline  Christianity,  and  of  our  present  re- 
ligious situation.     He  studies  long  and  deeply 
in  the  various  realms  of  our  science  and  of 
our  art.     When  he  meets  in  the  course  of  these 

349 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Studies    with    allusions    to    religion,    nobody, 
for  a  long  time,  tells  him  what  they  mean. 
He  becomes  absorbed  in  many  of  the  problems 
of  our  social  order.     Nobody  explains  to  him 
that  this  is  a  Christian  social  order.     For  in 
our  day,  as  we  all  know,  secular  learning  and 
religious  lore  live  so  much  apart  that  he  long 
fails  to  observe  that  they  have  any  connections. 
But  I   care  not  further   to   elaborate   my 
fiction.     Its  purpose  appears  when  I  add  that, 
by  the  will  of  the  higher  powers  concerned, 
all  this  preliminary  training  of  our  hero  is 
intended  to  lead  to  the  moment  when,  still 
clear  in  his  memory  both  of  the  Greco-Roman 
world  as  it  was,  and  of  Christianity  as  the 
apostolic  churches  had  experienced  its  mean- 
ing, but  now  brought  into  close  touch  with 
the  spirit  of  our  own  age,  and  acquainted  with 
important  results  of  our  own  science  and  art, 
our  visitor  from  a  former  world  is  ready  for  the 
great  issue.     One  more  change  comes. 

At  last,  then,  he  is  led  face  to  face  with 
Christianity  as  it  is;  and  he  is  acquainted 
with  the  outUnes  of  its  history  from  his  day 

350 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 

to  our  own.  Hereupon,  indeed,  his  problem 
of  Christianity  and  our  problem  stand  to- 
gether before  him. 

What  has  he  now  to  say  ?  And,  —  since 
I  am  here  venturing  to  feign  all  this  only  as  a 
means  for  making  clearer  my  own  case,  — 
what,  in  reply  to  his  imagined  words,  should  I, 
if  I  were  permitted  to  speak  to  him,  have  to 
offer  to  him  as  an  answer  to  his  problem  ? 

VI 

Our  stranger  from  the  past  finds  that  many 
of  the  religious  ideas  which  once  were  to  him, 
as  a  PauHne  Christian,  very  dear  and  —  as 
he  had  supposed  —  quite  essential,  now  are 
tragically  at  variance  with  what  he  has  learned 
since  he  was  awakened.  The  ascertained 
results  of  our  science,  the  course  of  history, 
yes,  some  of  the  very  ideas  which  he  now 
finds  to  be  most  emphasized  by  the  official 
traditions  of  the  existing  historical  Church,  — 
all  these  seem  to  be  at  war  with  the  spirit 
which  of  old  promised  to  guide  the  faithful 
into  all  truth.     Our  hero  has  awakened  to  a 

351 


THE    PROBLEM     OF   CHRISTIANITY 

sad   new   world.     If   I   have   ventured   thus 
tragically  to  disturb  his  slumbers,  my  only 
justification    for    the    seemingly    wanton    in- 
trusion upon  his  peace  lies  in  the  fact  that  his 
imaginary  case  is  an  allegorical  picture  of  our 
own    real    case.     As    he    wonders    over    the 
strange  vicissitudes  of  faith,  so  ought  we  to 
wonder.     Let  us  learn  some  of  the  lessons 
which   he   has   to   learn   about   the   contrast 
between  what  is  historical  and  what  is  es- 
sential  in  Christian  faith. 

Before  any  of  his  other  instruction  came  to 
him,  our  guest  from  the  apostoUc  age  began 
his  new  Ufe  by  finding,  with  deep  disappoint- 
ment, that  the  hope  of  which  all  the  apostles, 
as  far  as  he  knew  the  apostles,  made  so  much, 
has  never  been  fulfilled.     The  end  has  never 
come.     The    Lord    has    not    returned.     The 
saints  have  not  triumphed.     The  bride  waits 
in  vain  for  the  bridegroom.     When  Paul  said, 
** Behold,  brethren,  I  show  you  a  mystery; 
we  shall  not  all  sleep ;    but  we  shall  all  be 
changed,"  the  words  seemed  to  our  PauUne 
Christian   an  expression  of  an  essential  part 

352 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

of  the  faith.  Both  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead  and  its  early  occurrence ;  both  the  mean- 
ing of  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  and  the  cer- , 
tainty  of  the  nearness  of  the  Lord's  return; 
both  the  hope  of  immortality  and  the  assur- 
ance that  the  Kingdom  must  quickly  come,  — 
these  matters  together  had  seemed,  to  the 
apostohc  converts,  equally  of  the  very  es- 
sence of  the  faith.  Paul  had  not  divided  these 
various  teachings  one  from  another.  If  some 
one  of  old  had  said  to  the  believers:  "The 
return  of  Christ  is  not  near.  The  world  is  to 
undergo  centuries  of  torment  and  of  division ; 
the  Church  itself  is  to  be  corrupted  with  power 
and  distracted  with  earthly  cares;  the  gifts  of 
the  spirit  are  to  be  for  ages  withdrawn ;  and  no 
sign  of  heavenly  salvation  is  for  all  those  years 
to  appear  in  the  clouds" ;  —  then  the  faithful 
of  the  former  time  would  have  answered  such 
a  scoffer  according  to  his  faithlessness.  They 
would  have  said  of  his  words  what  Professor 
Mackintosh  says  of  Hegel's  waving  of  the 
dialectical  wand;  namely,  that  what  the 
scoffer  taught  was  possibly  not  worthy  of  any 


VOL.  II  —  2  A 


353 


b 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

religious  name;    but  was  very  certainly  not 

Christianity. 

Yet  the  very  first  discovery  of  our  Greek, 
upon  awakening,  has  been  that  every  dearest 
hope  of  the  early  Church  concerning  the  near 
deliverance  of  the  suffering  world  was  a 
delusion;  and  that  certain  of  the  apostle 
Paul's  most  burning  and  seemingly  inspired 
words  were  a  statement  of  Uterally  and  his- 
torically false  predictions. 

Since  he  became  aware  of  what  the  Chris- 
tian Church  has  become  since  the  apostolic 
age,  our  Greek  has  had  many  reasons  to  re- 
flect that  if  he,  at  least,  is  to  remain  a  modern 
Christian,  he  must   remember  that  he  is  a 
philosopher,  and  must  begin  in  a  new  form  the 
ancient  task  of  distinguishing  between  symbol 
and  truth,  between  figure  and  Hterally  accu- 
rate statement,  between  parable  and  interpre- 
tation.    So  far  as  the  end  of  the  world  is 
concerned,  he  has  now  learned  that  the  Church 
itself,  not  long  after  the  apostolic  age,  began 
a  course  in  which  all  but  certain  transient  and 
enthusiastic   sects   have   persisted   until   this 

354 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

day.  The  Church  learned,  namely,  to  de- 
fend what  it  viewed  as  the  essential  faith  of 
the  apostles  concerning  the  end  of  the  world, 
only  by  declaring  henceforth  that  the  apostles 
either  were  not  permitted  truthfully  to  grasp 
this  essential  faith  concerning  last  things,  or 
else  did  not  mean  what  they  said,  but  used 
figures  of  speech. 

This  has  constituted  the  first  lesson  concern- 
ing the  relations  between  the  historical  and  the 
essential  which  our  early  Christian  saint,  now 
transformed  into  a  latter-day  philosopher,  has 
been  forced  to  learn. 

VII 

Unquestionably,  certain  teachings  about 
the  person  and  work  of  Christ  seemed  of  old, 
and  still  seem,  to  our  reawakened  PauHne 
Christian  essential  to  the  religion  which 
Paul  taught  to  him. 

I  will  not  attempt  to  restate  what  consti- 
tutes so  much  of  the  essence  of  Christianity : 
"I  make  known  unto  you,  brethren,  the  gospel 
which  I  preached  unto  you,  which  also. ye 

355 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

received,   wherein   also  ye   stand,   by   which 

also    ye    are    saved,  ...  in    what    words    I 

'preached  unto  you,  if  ye  hold  it  fast,  except 

ve  believed  in  vain."     This  gospel,  our  Pau- 

• 

line  Christian  fully  remembers.     The  cross, 
Lhe  death,  the  resurrection,  the  appearance  of 
the  risen  Lord  to  the  brethren,  —  these  he 
knew  to  be  matters  which  of  old  he  fully 
accepted,  so  far  as  he  then  understood  them. 
These  he  beUeved  to  be  both  essential  and 
historical    truths.     His   present   problem   is: 
How  far,  and  in  what  form,  is  this  heart  of 
the    Pauline    doctrine    something    which    for 
him  to-day,  in  the  hght  of  what  the  modern 
world  has  learned,  and  in  view  of  what  it  has 
forgotten,  he  can  still  hold  to  be  both  true, 
and  unchangeable,  and  adequate  .^     When  he 
reviews  the  transformations  which  time  has 
wrought,  is  he  still  able  to  say,  "Christianity 
is  to  remain  for  me  what  Paul  said  that  it 
was"?     *'In    this   I    stand;     by   this   I    am 
saved":  — can    he    persist     in    using    these 

words  ^ 

When  he  tries  to  answer  this  question,  our 

356 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 

guest  has  to  remember  that  this  modern 
world  differs  from  the  world  in  whose  per- 
spective Paul  saw  this  picture  of  salvation; 
and  differs  too  in  many  other  respects  besides 
those  which  now  make  Paul's  language  about 
the  early  return  of  the  Lord  appear  to  be  a 
figure  of  speech  whereby  the  early  saints  were 
actually  misled. 

In  all  those  features  which  used  most  to 
appeal  to  his  imagination,  in  the  days  of  his 
apostohc  discipleship,  our  returned  Greek 
knows  that  the  PauHne  world  has  been,  both 
for  Christian  behevers  in  particular  and  for 
all  typical  modern  men  in  general,  simply 
transformed.  Its  heavens  have  passed  away. 
Its  very  earth  has  become  almost  unrecog- 
nizable. All  the  most  vividly  interesting  of 
those  orders  of  spiritual  beings  whom  Paul 
imagined  as  the  background  of  his  picture  of 
salvation,  have  changed,  or  have  entirely  lost 
their  meaning,  for  most  of  us.  The  PauHne 
angels  were  by  no  means  similar  even  to  those 

• 

mcorporeal  spiritual  beings  of  whom  a  later 
orthodox  theology  discoursed ;   and  whom  the 

357 


'"'■ 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

scholastic  angelology  made  a  topic  of  learned 
speculation.  Whatever  non-human  spiritual 
beings  there  are,  nobody,  whether  orthodox 
mediaeval  Christian  or  modern  man  of  science, 
conceives  them  as  Paul  imagined  his  angels. 
The  PauUne  demonology,  too,  has  no  mean- 
ing at  all  closely  resembling  its  apostohc  form, 
when  even  the  most  conservative  scholastic 
theologian  deals  to-day  with  the  beings  still 
called  by  the  same  name. 

Paul's  whole  picture  of  nature  is  remote 
from    ours.     Our    reawakened    Greek   knows 
that  all  the  references  to  warfare  with  princi- 
paUties  and   powers,   that   all   the   words   of 
Paul  regarding  the  mystery  cults  as  involving 
a  partaking  of  the  cup  of  demons,  must  be 
interpreted  in  a  profoundly  symbohc  fashion 
before  they  can  now  be  understood  or  ac- 
cepted.    In  fact,  whatever   the   apostle   told 
the  churches  of  old  can  be  retained  only  in 
case  a  large  use  of  symbols  is  made. 

When  our  Pauline  Christian  turns  to  the 
dogmas  which  the  later  Church  has  defined, 
and  looks  to  them  as  his  guides  for  interpret- 

358 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

ing  the  gospel  wherein  he  once  stood,  and  by 
which  he  was  to  be  saved,  he  finds,  in  these 
later  formulations,  very  much  that  seems  to 
him  almost  as  strange  as  Paul  himself  would 
have  seemed  if  the  apostle  had  been  present 
to  take  part  in  a  scholastic  disputation  during 
the  Middle  Ages. 

And  as  to  the  central  doctrine  of  the  person 
of  Christ,  it  was  inseparable,  in  the  mind  of 
the  PauHne  Christian,  from  the  doctrine  of 
the  Hving  divine  spirit  present  in  the  Church. 
And  that,  after  all,  was  what  the  whole 
story  of  the  life,  the  death,  and  the  exaltation 
of  Christ  most  meant  to  the  Pauline  believer. 
Moreover,  as  such  a  believer,  our  guest  had 
known  very  little  about  the  person  of  the 
historical  Jesus,  except  what  the  story  of  the 
Divine  death,  of  the  resurrection,  of  the  reap- 
pearance, of  the  exaltation,  and  of  the  in- 
dwelling of  Christ,  both  in  the  Church,  and 
in  the  believer's  heart,  had  made  for  our 
guest  himself,  and  for  his  brethren,  in  the  old 
days,  a  matter  of  common  social  religious  ex- 
perience, and  not  of  mere  narrative.     If  the 

359 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Pauline  doctrine  of  the  person  of  Christ  was, 
then,  indeed  essential  to  the  Pauline  faith, 
this,  its  very  essence,  consisted  in  its  charac- 
ter as  a  doctrine  of  the  nature  and  life  of  the 
Church.  For  the  exalted  and  divine  Christ 
was  expHcitly  known  and  interpreted  by  Paul 
as  the  very  life  of  the  Church  itself.  And 
his  appearance  on  earth  had  its  redemptive 
meaning  through  its  power  as  the  work  of  the 
founder  of  the  beloved  community. 

Our  returned  saint  stands,  then,  in  pres- 
ence of  a  great  problem.  If  all  this  old  faith 
is  to  mean  anything  to  him  to-day,  some  vast 
range  of  Pauline  religious  ideas  must  be  re- 
garded henceforth  as  symbols,  as  parables, 
as  shadows  cast  by  the  things  of  some  higher 
world,  when  they  pass  between  the  entrance 
of  our  cave  and  the  realm  of  unapproachable 
light  beyond.  Our  PauUne  Christian  of  the 
twentieth  century  may  well  remember  the 
vision  of  the  divine  which  once  was  his.  He 
may  fully  believe  still  in  its  essential  truth. 
He  may  believe  that  this  truth  had  its  his- 
torical basis.     But  now  that  he  has  returned 

360 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 

to  our  world,  he  must  no  longer  trust  indis- 
criminately all  the  shadowy  appearances.  He 
must  distinguish  between  those  which  reveal 
the  things  of  the  spiritual  world  as  they  are, 
and  those  which  essentially  belong  to  the  eyes 
of  us  who  dwell  in  the  cave.  Our  guest  can 
remain,  in  spirit,  a  Pauhne  Christian,  only  in 
case  he  also  learns,  while  justly  recognizing 
the  known  world  of  to-day,  how  not  to  confer 
henceforth  with  flesh  and  blood,  and  how  to 
discern  spiritually  the  things  of  the  spirit, 
despite  the  complexities  of  our  modern  realm. 
What  way  will  he  find  to  escape  from  his 
problems,  —  to  be  just  to  the  countless  novel- 
ties of  our  present  century,  and  yet  not  to  lose 
the  essence  of  the  gospel  which  Paul  preached 
unto  him,  which  he  also  received,  wherein 
also  he  stood,  by  which  also  he  was  to  be 
saved  ? 


VIII 

I  have  no  right  to  mention  any  one  answer 
which  our  guest  must  necessarily  give  to  all 
the    questions    thus    forced    upon    him.     He 

361 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

may,  for  all  that  I  know,  either  at  this  moment 
accept,  or  hereafter  come  to  accept,  any  one  of 
our  current  doctrines  of  the  person  of  Christ, 
orthodox  or  liberal,  dogmatic  or  speculative. 
But  of  this  I  am  sure.     If  he  can,  despite  all 
the  changes  and  the  disillusionments  to  which 
he  has  already  been  subjected,  and  also  de- 
spite all  the  further  changes  which  he  has  yet 
to  undergo ;   and  in  all  the  new  light  upon  the 
essence  of  Christianity  which  coming  centuries 
will  bring  to  him,  —  if,  I  say,  he  can  through 
all  this  remam  true  to  the  deepest  spirit  of 
his    Pauline    Christianity,    despite    the    vast 
masses  of  ancient  imagery  and  of  legend  which 
he  must  learn  to  view  as  mere  symbols  of 
deeper  truth,  —  then  the  one  thing  by  which 
he  must  hold  fast  is  the  Pauline  doctrine  of 
the  presence  of  the  redeeming  divine  spirit 
in  the  living  Church.     This  doctrine,  in  some 
form,  he  must  retain.     If  he  can  retain  it,  he 
will  be  in  spirit  a  Pauline  Christian,  however 
he  otherwise  interprets  the  person  of  Christ. 

So  long  as  he  is  able  somehow  to  hold  fast 
to  the  principle  of  this  doctrine,  —  then,  no 

362 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

matter  what  he  has  already  learned  or  here- 
after learns  to  sacrifice,  both  of  legend  and  of 
miracle;  both  of  narrative  and  of  abstractly 
formulated  dogma ;  both  of  the  literally  inter- 
preted words  of  the  apostle  concerning  angels 
and  concerning  demons  and  concerning  the 
coming  end  of  the  world;  and  no  matter 
what,  in  due  time,  he  has  to  sacrifice  of  the 
literally  interpreted  records  of  the  gospel 
history,  —  through  all  this  he  will  remain 
true,  —  not  necessarily  to  all  that,  as  Pauline 
Christian,  he  once  held,  or  even  thus  far  holds, 
to  be  essential.  He  w^ill,  however,  remain 
true  to  what,  as  a  fact,  was  the  very  heart  of 
all  the  hearts  of  the  faithful,  both  in  the 
Pauline  churches  and  in  all  the  subsequent 
ages  of  Christian  development. 

The  one  condition  of  such  holding  fast  by 
the  deepest  spirit  of  all  the  Christian  ages 
is,  I  repeat,  that  he  should  still  be  able  to  say : 
The  redeeming  divine  spirit  that  saves  man 
dwells  in  the  Church.  So  much  our  guest 
said  when  he  was  a  saint  of  old.  His  problem 
of  Christianity   is   now   simply   the  problem 

363 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

whether  he  can  say  this  to-day.  His  prob- 
lem for  the  future  is  the  problem  whether  he 
can  continue  to  say  this. 

If,  in  order  to  be  able  to  say  this,  he  has  to 
learn  now,  or  in  the  future,  to  view  as  symbol, 
as  legend,  as  myth,  any  accepted  narrative 
that  you  may  mention  concerning  the  person 
of  Christ,  he  will  be  in  genuine  touch  both 
with  the  perfectly  historical  Christianity  of 
Paul,  and  with  the  deepest  meaning  of  the 
whole  of  Christian  history,  so  long  as  he  is 
still    able  to   say.    The  divine   spirit   dwells 
in  the  Church,  and  thereby  redeems  mankind. 
So  long  as,  for  him,  the  Christ  whom  Paul 
preached  is  known,  as  he  was  to  Paul,  not 
mainly  after  the  flesh,  but  after  the  Spirit, 
our  returned  Pauline  Christian  will  deal  with 
literal  truth,  precisely  in  so  far  as  the  divine 
spirit   does  dwell   in   the  Church.     And  our 
guest  will  never  lose  touch  with  genuine  his- 
torical Christianity,  precisely  so  long  as  he, 
who  learned  this  teaching,  as  Paul  learned  it, 
from  the  Church  itself,  holds  it  as  the  doctrine 
wherein  is  expressed  whatever  is  most  vital 

364 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

in  Christianity,  and  whatever  has  always 
been  most  at  the  heart  of  the  influence  of 
Christianity  upon  civilization. 

IX 

Hereupon  you  may  ask :  "But  what  church 
shall  our  Pauline  Christian  accept  as  the 
true  Christian  Church.^"  The  answer  is 
simple.  I  have  indicated  that  answer  in  the 
first  part  of  our  lectures. 

Our  guest  will  certainly  not  take  a  very 
profound  interest  in  whatever  has  divided 
the  later  Christian  world  into  great  or  into 
little  mutually  exclusive  partitions.  The 
official  aspects  of  the  post-Pauline  church  will 
not  attract  his  most  eager  interest.  Still 
less  will  he  feel  much  concerned  with  the 
endless  ebb  and  flow  of  the  more  petty  secta- 
rian strifes.  His  church,  then,  will  be  neither 
the  oflScial  church  nor  the  sect.  Those  efl'orts 
which  ignore  the  larger  human  hopes  and 
the  universal  mission  of  the  apostolic  Church, 
—  those  efforts  which  exhaust  themselves  in 
barren  imitations  of  the  enthusiastic  accidents 

365 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  the  early  communities,  will  not  seem  to 
our  Pauline  Christian  to  represent  the  Church 

which  he  knew. 

He  will  therefore  care  not  at  all  for  the 
founding  of  still  other  and  new  sects.  The 
great  Church  organizations  he  will  value  for 
whatever  life  of  the  spirit  they  have  fostered. 
Their  wars  with  one  another  or  with  the  her- 
etics he  will  regard  as  due  to  bHndness,  — to 
the  original  sin  of  man  the  social  animal. 

Least  of  all  will  he  accept  an  interpretation 
of  Christianity,  if  such  there  be,  which,  cen- 
tring all  its  interests  in  an  effort  to  perfect 
its  picture  of  the  human  personality  of  the 
founder,  believes  the  Church  itself  to  be  a 
relatively  accessory  or  accidental  feature  of 
Christianity,  —  least  of  all  will  our  Pauline 
Christian  accept,  I  say,  this  interpretation 
(amongst  all  the  serious  attempts  to  deal  with 
his  problem)  as  the  true  expression  of  the 
essence  of  Christianity. 

No,  if  our  Pauline  Christian  is  to  remain 
true  to  the  spirit  of  his  original  faith,  the  one 
essential  article  of  his  creed  must  be:    The 

366 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

divine  spirit  dwelling  in  the  living  Church 
redeems  mankind.  Therefore,  his  test  of  the 
Church  will  simply  be  this,  that,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  indeed  the  Church,  it  actually  unifies  all 
mankind  and  makes  them  one  in  the  divine 
spirit.  All  else  in  Paul's  teaching  our  guest 
may  come  to  regard  as  symbol,  or  as  legend. 
This  he  must  hold  to  be  literally  true,  or  else 
he  must  lose  the  essence  of  his  faith.  The 
Church,  however,  must  mean  the  company  of 
all  mankind,  in  so  far  as  mankind  actually  win 
the  genuine  and  redeeming  life  in  brotherhood, 
in  loyalty,  and  in  the  beloved  community. 

Our  guest  from  the  far-off  first  century  has 
learned  that  the  very  power  of  the  early  Church 
was  inseparable  from  its  erroneous  belief 
that  the  world  was  about  to  end.  For  only 
through  this  belief  was  it  able  to  become  sure 
that,  through  God's  power,  its  intimate  little 
companies,  when  they  loved  so  well  their 
life  of  the  spirit,  were  witnessing,  or  were 
about  to  witness,  the  salvation  of  all  mankind. 

Now  just  as  the  Pauline  churches  were 
able  to  win  truth  even  through  the  heart  of 

367 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

their  error,  —  even  so,  for  our  Pauline  Chris- 
tian, whatever  errors  have  still  to  be  aban- 
doned,   and    whatever    symbols   have   to    be 
translated  into  new  speech,  the  true  Church  is 
represented  on  earth  by  whatever  body  of 
men    are    most   faithful,    according   to    their 
lights,  to  the  cause  of  the  unity  of  all  man- 
kind.    Therefore  no  sect,  no  detached  indi- 
vidual, and  no  official  organization  can  con- 
stitute the  true  Church,  except  in  so  far  as 
such  body  or  individual  shall  be  found  full  of 
the  spirit  and  actually  furthering  the  advent 
of   the   universal   community.     Yet,   for  our 
Pauline  Christian,  if  he  can  indeed  hold  fast 
his  early  faith,  the  Church  will  be  a  reality,  just 
as,  to  his  mind,  it  was  already  real  in  the  little 
Pauline  communities,  and  just  as  it  is  now  real 
wherever  two  or  three  are  gathered  together 
in  the  name  of  the  genuinely  divine  spirit. 

All  this,  I  say,  our  Pauline  Christian  can 
regard  as  in  essence  the  faith  of  the  apostles. 
If  despite  all  changes  he  still  can  hold  that  so 
much  of  their  faith  was  literally  true,  then 
nobody  need  dictate  to  him  what  he  shall 

368 


HISTORICAL     AND     ESSENTIAL 

further  hold  regarding  the  person  or  regarding 
the  work  of  Christ.     Christ  was  for  Paul  the 
indwelhng  Spirit   of  the  community,   whose 
personal  history  was,  for  him,  an  historical 
reality,    spiritually    interpreted,    just   as   the 
coming  judgment  was  a  near  future  historical 
event,  and  was  also  to  be  historically  inter- 
preted.    Our   reawakened   Pauline   Christian 
will  remain  true  to  his  original  faith  so  long 
as  he  can  retain  its  spiritual  interpretation. 
He  will  also  remain  true  to  a  genuinely  his- 
torical Christianity,  so  long  as  he  holds  fast 
by  his  Pauline  faith.     And  this  essential  faith 
in  the  divine  presence  of  the  spirit  in  the 
Church  he  can  retain,  whatever  be  his  view  as 
to  the  literal  correctness  of  the  reports  of  the 
coming  judgment,  and  whatever  he  comes  to 
hold,  as  to  the  correctness  of  this  or  of  that 
account  of  the  person  of  Christ. 


Herewith  I  come  to  the  one  word  which  I 
should  wish  to  offer  to  our  guest  were  I  per- 
mitted to  present  to  him  the  doctrine  of  the 


VOL.  II  —  2b 


369 


m 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

community  which,  in  this  second  portion  of 
our  discussion,  I  have  attempted  in  outhne 
to  expound  and  to  defend. 

The  final  task  of  interpretation   which  I 
thus  assume  is  determined,  for  me,  both  by 
the  general  plan  of  our  whole  inquiry,  and  by 
the  feigned  situation  of  our  Pauhne  Christian. 
His  case,  as  I  have  stated  it,  is  a  dream  of 
my  own.     But  in  truth  his  fancied  case  is 
our   real   case.     He   is   our   genuine   modern 
man.     He  is  the  child  of  the  whole  historical 
process  of  humanity.     His  is  the  education 
of    the    human    race.     Modern    civilization, 
with  all  its  problems  and  its  tragedies,  is,  in 
the  very  loftiest  of  its  hopes,  in  the  most 
precious   of  its   spiritual  possessions,   in  the 
heart  of  its  deepest  faith,  a  product,  —  yes, 
if   you  will,  despite   its   endless   crimes,  —  a 
disciple   and  a  convert  of  the  divine  spirit 
that  for  a  while  manifested  itself  in  the  Pauhne 

churches. 

I  say  this  in  no  partisan  spirit,  and  not  in 
the  defence  or  in  the  praise  of  any  sect,  or  of 
any  one  Christian  church,  nor  even  for  the 

370 


HISTORICAL     AND     ESSENTIAL 

sake  of  extolling  the  work  which  the  whole 
Christian  labor  of  the  centuries  has  accom- 
pHshed.  The  Christian  churches  and  nations 
of  mankind  have  done  as  yet  but  the  very 
least  fragment  of  what  it  was  their  task  to 
accomphsh;  namely,  to  bring  the  Beloved 
Community  into  existence,  or  to  bring  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  to  earth.  But,  in  all 
their  weakness,  their  blindness,  their  strifes, 
the  Christian  churches  and  nations  have  had 
this  to  their  spiritual  profit;  namely,  that  to 
them  has  been  committed  the  greatest  task 
of  the  ages ;  and  they  have  been  more  or  less 
clearly  aware  of  the  fact.  So  far  as  they  have 
been  thus  aware,  they  have  gradually  grown 
in  the  practice  and  in  the  love  of  the  art  of 
brotherhood.  They  have  also  tended  towards 
the  organization,  still  so  remote,  in  which  the 
ideal  of  the  Church  is  yet  to  find  its  expression, 
if  indeed  humanity  ever  succeeds  in  its  task 
at  any  time.  Hence,  indeed,  our  Christian 
civilization,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  has  thus 
succeeded,  has  expressed  the  power  of  pre- 
cisely   that    spirit    which    manifested    itself 

371 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  the  Pauline  churches.  And  if,  hereafter, 
what  we  now  call  Christian  civiHzation  passes 
away,  and  if  what  we  now  know  as  a  civiH- 
zation alien  or  hostile  to  Christianity  comes 
to  undertake  this  task  of  unifying  mankind, 
and  succeeds  therein,  —  then  that  strange 
new  civiHzation  will  never  be  more  remote, 
we  may  be  sure,  from  the  Hfe  of  the  PauHne 
churches,  and  from  the  spirit  which  dwelt 
in  them,  than  we  now  are.  Even  now,  the 
name  Christian  is  a  very  small  thing  in  com- 
parison with  the  right  to  use  that  name  which 
any  company  of  men,  of  any  faith  under 
heaven,  possess,  if  indeed  the  PauHne  charity 
pervades  their  life,  unifies  their  own  com- 
munity, and  thus  brings  nearer  the  brother- 
hood of  all  mankind,  and  the  triumph  of  the 
true  and  only  church  universal. 

Our  guest,  then,  has  the  same  problem  with 
ourselves.  If  he  is  true  to  his  faith,  and  if 
we  know  what  true  loyalty  is,  he  and  we 
acknowledge  one  Lord  and  one  faith.  What 
we  both  desire  to  know  is  whether  this  faith 
has  a  literal  foundation  in  the  deepest  nature 

372 


"■'-"•■""'-"^-  -^ifliiiUnfirtiilrtiilf  ■iiii  ffililiiil 


^ui^mm^^ium^^itisiMsSiM 


HISTORICAL   AND    ESSENTIAL 
of  things.     Is  the  whole  real  world  the  expres- 
sion of  one  divine  process  ?    And  is  this  pro- 
cess the  process  of  the  Spirit  ? 

XI 

Our   guest   is   a   philosopher.     As   such    I 
address  him.     In  his  case  there  is  no  fear  lest 
I  should  arouse  false  hopes  of  merely  verbal 
agreements.     He  has  been  too  much  and  too 
often  disillusioned  to  be  likely  to  mistake  my 
own  use  of  symbols  for  a  careless  or  an  unjust 
desire  to  arouse  false  hopes.     He  knows  that 
I  have  no   legends   to   defend   from   critical 
attacks.     He  knows  that  the  world  of  which 
I  speak  is  one  to  which  only  one  perfectly 
determinate  portion  of  the  Pauline  phrase- 
ology applies.     I  have  already  said  what  that 
portion  is.     I  now  have  only  to  summarize 
that  word. 

Addressing  our  guest,  I  should  sum  up  the 
result  of  our  metaphysical  inquiry  thus: 
The  world  is  the  process  of  the  spirit.  An 
endless  time-sequence  of  events  is  controlled, 
according  to  this  account,  by  motives  which, 

373 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

endless  in  their  whole  course,  interpret  the 
past  to  the  future.  These  motives  express 
themselves  in  an  evolution  wherein  to  every 
problem  corresponds,  in  the  course  of  the  end- 
less ages,  its  solution,  to  every  antithesis  its 
resolution,  to  every  estrangement  its  recon- 
ciliation, to  every  tragedy  the  atoning  triumph 
which  interprets  its  evil.  That  this,  on  the 
whole,  is  the  character  of  the  world-process,  our 
argument  has  insisted.  But  how  this  reconcil- 
iation takes  place,  we  have  not  attempted  to 
know.  Concerning  the  details  of  the  world  of 
time,  we  can  learn  only  by  historical  experience. 
But,  this,  —  such  is  my  thesis,  —  this  is 
the  world  of  interpretation  whose  outlines,  in 
the  foregoing,  I  have  been  attempting,  very 
dimly,  to  portray.  This  world  is  throughout 
essentiallv  social,  as  is  also  our  own  human 
world.  It  is  essentially  historical,  as  is  any 
world  involving  a  time-process.  It  is  essen- 
tially teleological,  as  is  every  world  wherein  we 
can  speak,  as,  according  to  our  philosophy  of 
interpretation,  we  can  justly  speak,  of  a  process 
involving  true  development. 

374 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

Now  of  this  world  as  a  whole,  our  sketch  has 
indeed  attempted  to  suggest  only  the  barest 
outlines.  The  principal  feature  which,  in 
these  lectures,  I  have  been  able  to  portray, 
is  that  this  world  has  the  structure  of  a  com 
munity. 

But   hereupon   there   remains   one   further 
and  centrally  important  feature  upon  which  to 
insist.     This  endless  order  of  time  stands  in 
contrast  to  an  ideal  goal,   which   the  world 
endlessly  pursues  with  its  sequence  of  events, 
but  never  reaches  at  any  one  moment  of  the 
time  sequence.     The  pursuit,  the  search  for 
the  goal,  the  new  interpretation  which  every 
new  event  requires,  —  this  endless  sequence  of 
new  acts  of  interpretation,  —  this  constitutes 
the  world.     This  is  the  order  of  time.     This 
pursuit  of  the  goal,  this  bondage  of  the  whole 
creation  to  the  pursuit  of  that  which  it  never 
reaches,  —  this     naturally     tragic     estrange- 
ment of  this  world  from  its  goal,  —  this  con- 
stitutes the  problem  of  the  universe. 

"Such,"   so  I  should  say,   addressing  our 
guest:   "Such  was  your  Pauline  world.     Lost 

375 


i; 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

it  was;  because  through  no  earthly  power 
could  it  ever  reach  its  goal.  It  was  groaning 
and  travailing  in  pain  until  now.  It  needed 
a  deliverer.  It  hoped  for  such  a  deliverer. 
The  Christian  Church  believed  that,  through 
the  might  of  the  spirit,  the  world  had,  at  last, 
found  its  deliverer.  The  divine  spirit  had 
appeared  on  earth,  and  now  dwelt  in  the  com- 
munity of  the  faithful." 

"Paul's  symbols,"  so  I  should  continue 
(still  addressing  our  guest),  "were  but  images 
of  the  truth  when  he  spoke  of  the  coming  end 
of  the  world.  So  were  his  symbols  but  alle- 
gorical when  he  told  of  the  way  in  which  the 
world  was  redeemed.  But  concerning  the 
redemption  of  the  world  he  knew  two  absolute 
truths.  Both  of  them  he  expressed  in  figures. 
Let  me  express  both  of  them  in  terms  of  our 
doctrine  of  the  real  community. 

"The  salvation  of  the  world  occurs  pro- 
gressively, endlessly,  in  constant  contest  with 
evil,  as  a  process  that  is  never  ended.  The 
deeds  which  we  know  as  genuinely  interpreting 
the  past  to  the  future,  as  the  reconciling  deeds, 

376 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

as  the  deeds  which  accomplish  what  is  pos- 
sible towards  making  the  world  seem  to  us  a 
divine  process,  are  deeds  of  charity  and  of 
atonement.     These   can   exist   in    their   true 
form  only  in  the  community.     In  the  human 
world  you  of  the  Pauline  churches  knew  them 
as  the  deeds  through  which  the  divine  spirit 
was  manifested.     These  deeds,  as  you  asserted, 
not  the  power  of  flesh  and  blood,  but   the 
spirit  who  founded  the  Church,  and  who  dwelt 
in  it,  accomplished. 

"  Our  doctrine  of  the  world  as  a  community, 
of  the  social  life  of  the  universe  endlessly  re- 
vealing the  divine,  —  never  wholly  at  any  one 
time,  but  in  the  world's  process,  expresses  in ' 
the  form  of  the  metaphysics  of  the  community 
what  you  grasped  through  an  intuition  of 
faith.  I 

"But  the  salvation  of  the  whole  world,  the 
consciousness  that  in  its  wholeness  the  world 
is  and  expresses  and  fulfils  the  divine  plan,  and 
is  wholly  interpreted  and  reconciled,  —  this  is 
something  which  is  never  completed  at  any 
point  of  time.     Yet  this  unity  of  the  spirit, 

877 


I 


ffel 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

this   consciousness  of  reconciliation,  this  tri- 
umph over  the  universal  death  whereof  every 
event  in  time  furnishes  an  illustration,  this 
occurs,  in  our  worid  of  interpretation,  not  at 
any  one  moment  of  time,  but  through  an  in- 
sight into  the  meaning  of  all  that  occurs  in 
time.     We  do  not  declare,  in  our  metaphys- 
ical  doctrine,  that   the   divine  consciousness 
is  timeless.     We  declare  that  the  whole  order 
of  time,  the  process  of  the  spirit,  is  interpreted, 
and  so  interpreted  that,  when  viewed  in  the 
light  of  its  goal,  the  whole  world  is  reconciled 
to  its  own  purposes.     The  endless  tragedies 
of  its  sequence  are  not  only  interpreted  step  by 
step  through  deeds  of  charity  and  of  atone- 
ment, but,  as  it  were  (I  speak  now  wholly  in 
a  figure),  'in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye,'  the  whole  of  time,  with  all  its  tragedies, 
is,  by  the  interpreter  of  the  universe,  reconciled 
to  its  own  ideal.     And  in  this  final  union  of 
temporal  sequence,  of  the  goal  that  is  never 
attained  in  time,   and    of   the   divine    spirit 
through    whom    the  world    is    reconciled    to 
itself  and  to  its  own  purpose,  the  real  com- 

378 


HISTORICAL    AND    ESSENTIAL 

munity,  the  true  interpretation,  the  divine 
interpreter,  the  plan  of  salvation,  —  these  are 
expressed." 

"This,"  I  should  say  to  our  guest,  "is  indeed 
not  religion ,  bu t  metaphysics .  You  as  philoso- 
pher, and  as  Pauline  Christian,  well  know  the 
distinction.  But  you  at  least  know  what 
is  vital  in  Christianity.  You  know  your  own 
problem  and  ours.  You  then  can  judge,  you 
who  are  the  true  heir  of  all  the  ages,  —  the 
true  modern  man,  —  whether  we  have,  in  all 
this,  duly  distinguished  between  the  essential 
and  the  historical,  and  shown  their  unity." 

"At  all  events,"  so  I  should  finally  say, 
"we  know  that  whether  the  modern  man 
calls  himself  a  Christian  or  not,  is  a  matter 
of  names.  We  know,  however,  what  it  is  to 
beheve  in  the  presence  of  the  spirit  in  the 
Church.  We  know  that  whoever  can  see  his 
way  to  define  and  to  justify  such  a  belief,  may 
indeed  not  be  called  a  Christian,  but  has 
solved  what  is  indeed  essential  about  the  prob- 
lem of  Christianity." 


379 


m 


I 


XVI 


SDMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 


LECTURE  XVI 

SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

TN  beginning  these   lectures  I  said  that  I 
should  undertake  the  task  neither  of  the 
apologist  nor  of  the  hostile  critic  of  Chris- 
tianity. 


Some  of  my  hearers  may  have  thought 
this  statement  to  be  modelled  after  the  word 
of  "jesting  Pilate,"  who  asked,  "What  is 
truth?"  but  "stayed  not  for  an  answer." 
When  I  added,  at  the  same  time,  that  I  should 
also  avoid  the  position,  not  only  of  the  hos- 
tile, but  of  the  indifferent  critic  of  Christian- 
ity, the  paradox  of  this  initial  definition  of 
our  undertaking  may  have  appeared  to  be- 
come hopeless.  "  What  .^"  — so  my  hearer 
may  have  inwardly  exclaimed,  —  "neither 
apologist,  nor  hostile  critic,  nor  yet  indif- 
ferent .^  What  manner  of  philosophy  of  the 
Christian  religion  can  such  a  student  pro- 
pound ?    A  Pilate,  —  but  a  Pilate  who  adds 

383 


t*t»%'- 


I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

that  he  is  not  even  indifferent,  —  who  shall 
assume  and  maintain  this  character?" 

I  was  willing,  at  the  outset  of  our  course, 
to   accept  the  risk  of  such  a  judgment.     I 
then   justified   my  position   merely  in   so  far 
as  the  emphasis  upon  our  title:   "The  Prob- 
lem of  Christianity,"  enabled  me  to  remind 
you  from  the  outset  that  problems  ought  to 
be  considered,  if  possible,  with  an  open  mind. 
Yet  you  will  also  have  felt  that  whoever  dis- 
cusses a  problem  hopes  to  reach  some  result ; 
and  that  whoever  invites  others  to  take  part 
with  him  in  such  a  discussion  is  responsible 
for  showing  in  the  end,  to  those  who  listen, 
some   outcome   which   will   make   the   quest 
seem  to  them  worth  while.     And  if  indeed 
we  are  to  get  any  result  from  the  study  of 
the  problem  of   Christianity,  must  not  such 

« 

a  result  take  the  form  either  of  a  defence  or 
of  an  attack,  or  of  a  counsel  to  regard  the  whole 
topic  with  indifference?  With  such  obvious 
objections  in  mind  some  of  you  may  have 
listened  to  our  first  lecture. 

But  now  that  our  inquiry  is  completed,  and 

384 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

now  that  we  come  to  summarize  its  results, 
are  we  not  prepared  to  return  to  our  initial 
statement,  and  to  see  why,  despite  its  para- 
dox, it  was  justified,  and  has  not  proved 
fruitless?  Nothing  is  farther  from  my  wish 
than  to  magnify  unduly  the  extremely  modest 
office  of  the  philosophical  inquirer.  But 
when  I  now  ask,  not:  "What  have  I,  in  all 
my  weakness  as  a  student  of  philosophy, 
accomplished  in  the  course  of  these  few  lec- 
tures?" but  "What  word  would  an  ideally 
trustworthy  teacher,  if  such  were  accessible 
to  us,  address  to  the  modern  man  concerning 
the  problem  of  Christianity?"  I  have  to 
remember  that  not  merely  Pontius  Pilate, 
but  quite  another  man,  is  reported  to  have  said 
something  that  bears  upon  this  very  prob- 
lem. Let  my  words,  so  far  as  they  are  mine, 
be  forgotten.  But  let  us  remember  that 
John  the  Baptist,  according  to  the  gospel 
story,  was  no  apologist  for  the  teaching  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and  was  still  less 
its  hostile  critic,  and  was  least  of  all  an  in- 
different   critic.     What    the    burden    of   his 


VOL.  II  —  2c 


385 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

preaching  was,  we    all   know:    "The    axe  is 
laid  at  the  root  of  the  tree.     The  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  is  at  hand."     John  did  not  create 
a  new  sect.     He  did  not  preach  a  new  creed. 
He  did  not  himself  undertake  to  found  a  new 
religion.     He   did    not   defend;     he   did   not 
assail    the    Kingdom    of     Heaven.      He    an- 
nounced that  a  religion,  long  needed,  was  yet 
to   come.     His   references   to   the   early   end 
of  all  things,  and  to  the  imminence  of  the 
final   transformation  of  human  affairs,   may 
well   have   been,   like   all   other   Apocalyptic 
announcements  of  those  days,  only  symbols. 
But  the  deeper  meaning  that  lay  beneath  his 
teaching   was   none   the    less   true.      I   hold 
that  this  deeper  meaning  is  still  true.     The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  still  at  hand  in  pre- 
cisely   the    sense    in    which    every    temporal 
happening  is,  in  its  own  way,  and,  according 
to  its  special  significance,  a  prophecy  of  the 
triumph  of  the  spirit,  and  a  revelation  of  the 
everlasting    nearness    of    the    insight    which 
interprets,   and   of  the   victory   which   over- 
comes the  world. 

386 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

n 

The  essential  message  of  Christianity  has 
been   the   word   that   the   sense   of  life,   the 
very  being  of  the  time  process  itself,  consists 
in  the  progressive  realization  of  the  Univer- 
sal Community  in  and  through  the  longings, 
the  vicissitudes,  the   tragedies,   and   the   tri- 
umphs  of  this  process  of  the  temporal  world. 
Now  this  message  has  been  historically  ex- 
pressed through  the  symbols,  through  the  tra- 
ditions, and  through  the  concrete  life  of  what- 
ever  human    communities    have   most    fully 
embodied  the  essential  spirit  of  Christianity. 
We  know  not  in  what  non-human  forms  the 
spiritual  life    may  now  or  hereafter   find  its 
temporal    embodiment.       Our    metaphysical 
doctrine,  dealing,  as  it  does,  with  universal 
issues,  is  quite  unable  to  extend  our  vision  to 
any  heavenly  realm  of  angelic   powers.     We 
have  undertaken  merely  to  defend  a  thesis 
regarding  the  form  in  which  the  life  of  the 
community,  whether  human  or  non-human, 
finds  its  conscious  expression. 

387 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

On  earth,  as  we  have  seen,  the  universal 
community  is  nowhere  visibly  realized.  But 
in  the  whole  world,  the  divine  life  is  expressed 
in  the  form  of  a  community.  Herewith,  in 
teaching  us  this  general  but  intensely  practi- 
cal truth,  the  "kindly  light"  seems  also  to 
show  us  not,  in  its  temporal  details,  "the  dis- 
tant scene,"  but  the  "step"  which  we  most 
need  to  see  "amid  the  encircling  gloom." 
And  our  little  task  it  has  been  to  learn 
whether,  for  our  special  purpose,  that  step 
is  not,  in  just  our  present  sense,  "enough." 


Ill 

This  is  why  we  have  been  right  to  take, 
not  Pilate  indeed,  but  John  the  Baptist,  for 
our  guide.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  "at 
hand."  For,  in  the  true  unity  of  the  spirit, 
we  always  stand  in  the  presence  of  the  divine 
interpretation  of  the  whole  temporal  process, 
and  are  members,  if  we  choose,  of  the  truly 
universal  community.  Yet,  since  only  the 
whole  of  time  can  express  the  whole  of  the 

388 


i^^g^gjg^gSiiM^mSSMSM 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 
ideal,  and  can  exhaust  the  meaning  of  the 
process  of  the  spirit,  no  one  event  constitutes 
"the  coming  of  the  end,"  and  the  true  church 
never  yet  has  become  visible  to  men.     And 
that  is  true  simply  because  the  meaning  of 
the  whole  of  time  can  never  become  ade- 
quately visible  at  any  one  moment  of  time. 
Whoever  preaches  the  Kingdom  must  accept 
this  limitation  of  every  finite  and  temporal 
bemg.     He  must  not  say :   Lo  here  !   and  Lo 
there  !    Signs  and  wonders  will  not  be  vouch- 
safed to  him,  or  to  his  hearers,  as  sufiicient 
to  present  any  immediate  vision  of  the  divine 
presence.     The  truth  of  the  word:    "Lo,  I 
am  with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of 
the  world,"  will  never  be  merely  perceived  ; 
just  as  this  same  truth  will  never  be  expres- 
sible in   terms   of  the   abstract   conceptions 
which  James  found  to  be  so  "sterile."     This 
truth  is  simply  the  truth  of  an  interpretation. 
What  it  means  is  that,  for  eveiy  estrangement 
that  appears  in  the  order  of  time,  there  some- 
where is  to  be  found,  and  will  be  found,  the 
reconciling  spiritual   event;    that   for  every 

389 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

wrong  there  will  somewhere  appear  the  cor- 
responding   remedy;     and    that    for    every 
tragedy   and   distraction   of  individual  exist- 
ence the  universal  community  will   find  the 
^ay  — how    and   when   we    know   not  — to 
provide  the  corresponding  unity,  the  appro- 
priate triumph.     We  are  saved  through  and 
in    the    community.     There    is    the    victory 
which   overcomes   the   world.     There   is   the 
interpretation  which  reconciles.     There  is  the 
doctrine  which  we  teach.     This,  so  far  as  we 
have  had    time,  in   these  brief   lectures,  to 
state  our  case,  is  our  philosophy,  and  this 
doctrine,  as  we  assert,  is  in  agreement  with 
what  is  vital  in  Christianity. 

The  apologists  for  Christian  tradition  gen- 
erally fail  to  express  such  a  doctrine,  because 
they  misread  the  symbols  which  tradition 
has  so  richly  furnished.  The  assailants  of 
Christianity  are  generally  ignorant  of  the 
meaning  of  the  ideal  of  the  universal  and 
beloved  community.  Those  who  are  indif- 
ferent to  Christianity  are  generally  unaware 
of  what  salvation  through  loyalty  signifies. 

390 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

Hence  it  has  been  necessary  for  us  to  refuse 
to  take  part  with  any  of  the  parties  to  the 
traditional  controversies.  Hereby  we  have 
been  able  to  interpret,  however,  what  the 
apologists  and  the  critics  of  Christianity 
equally  need  to  recognize.  Therefore  I  sub- 
mit that  our  quest  has  not  been  fruitless. 


IV 

Our  last  words  must  include  two  final 
attempts  to  set  our  case  before  you  for  your 
judgment.  The  first  of  these  attempts  will 
be  an  eflFort  to  furnish  one  more  illustration 
of  our  philosophy.  The  second  attempt  will 
endeavor  to  point  out  a  practical  applica- 
tion of  our  foregoing  teaching. 

Let  me  briefly  indicate  what  each  of  these 
closing  considerations  will  be.  First,  let  me 
speak  of  the  illustration  of  our  philosophy 
which  I  here  propose  to  oflFer. 

I  have  already  said  that  we  cannot,  like 
the  founders  of  new  religious  faiths,  point 
to  any  sign  or  wonder  as  the  evidence  that 

391 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

we  have  rightly  interpreted  the  divine  pro- 
cess of  which  the  world  is  the  expression. 
Yet,  as  I  leave  our  argument,  in  its  incomplete 
statement,  to  produce,  if  possible,  some  effect 
upon  your  future  thoughts  about  these  mat- 
ters, I  wish  to  call  your  attention,  —  not  to  a 
further  technical  proof  of  our  philosophy  of 
interpretation,  but  to  a  closing  exemplifica- 
tion of  its  main  doctrine.  This  example 
may  serve  to  bring  our  philosophy,  which 
many  of  you  will  have  found  too  recondite 
and  too  speculative,  into  closer  touch  with 
certain  thoughtful  interests  which  not  only 
our  own  age,  but  many  future  ages  of  human 
inquiry,  are  certain  to  cherish. 

I  wish,  namely,  to  indicate  that  our  main 
thesis  concerning  the  World  of  Interpretation 
is  not  only  in  harmony  with  the  spirit  which 
guides  the  researches  of  the  empirical  natural 
sciences,  but  is,  in  a  very  striking  way,  sug- 
gested to  us  afresh  when  we  ponder  the 
meaning  which  the  very  existence  and  the 
successes  of  the  empirical  sciences  seem  to 
imply.     In  other  words,  I  wish  to  show  you 

392 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

that  our  theory  of  the  World  of  Interpreta- 
tion,  and  our  doctrine  that  the  whole  process 
of  the  temporal  order  is  the  progressive  ex- 
pression of  a  single  spiritual  meaning,  is  — 
not  indeed  proved  -  but  lighted  up,  when  we 
reconsider  for  a  moment  the  question  :  "What 
manner  of  natural  world  is  this  in  which  the 
actual  successes  of  our  inductive  sciences  are 
possible.?" 

You  will  understand  that  what  I  say  in 
this  connection  is  a  mere  hint,  and  is  not 
intended  as  a  demonstrative  argument.     Our 
philosophy    of    interpretation    teaches    that 
the  whole  of  time  is  a  manifestation   of  a 
world-order    which    contains    its    own    inter- 
preter.     But  the  illustration  to  which  I  shall 
call  your   attention   shows   us   a  connection 
between  philosophical   idealism   and   natural 
science   such   as   few   have   ever   recognized. 
Once  more  I  have  here  to  express  my  indebt- 
edness to  Charles  Peirce.     For  it  is  he  who 
has  repeatedly  pointed  out  that  this  matter 
to  which   T  shall  call  your  attention  has  a 
deep  meaning,  and  tends  to  make  probable 


IfikUHk  iti^Mfe^UiMingMiMihidiMA 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

a  thesis  about  the  nature  of  things  which  we 
shall  find  to  be  in  close  harmony  with  our 
doctrine  of  the  world  as  a  progressively  real- 
ized Community  of  Interpretation. 

So  much  for  a  hint  of  the  first  of  the  two 
matters  which  these  closing  words  will  call 
to    your    notice.     The    second    matter    will 
concern  the  practical  outcome  of  our  quest. 
I  have  no  new  faith  to  preach,  and  no  ambi- 
tion to  found  either  a  sect  or  a  party.     But  it 
is  fair  to  ask  yet  one  question  as  the  last 
issue  which  we   have   time   to   face.     If  our 
account   of   the   Problem   of   Christianity   is 
true,  what  ought  we  to  do  for  the  furtherance 
of  our  common  rehgious  interests?     With  a 
summary  formulation  of  that  question,  and 
with  a  very  little  counsel  regarding  its  answer, 
my  lecture,  and  this  course,  will  end. 


Next,  then,  let  me  sketch  my  closing 
illustration  of  our  philosophy  of  interpreta- 
tion.    Let  me  show  you  that  there  is  a  har- 

394 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

mony,  unexpected  and  interesting,  between 
the  view  of  the  universe  which  the  general 
philosophy  of  these  lectures  defends,  and  the 
result  to  which  we  are  led  when  we  ponder, 
as  Charles  Peirce  has  taught  us  to  ponder,' 
upon  the  conditions  which  make  the  actual 
successes  of  our  natural  sciences  possible.^ 

Every  one  knows  that  the  natural  sciences 
depend,  for  their  existence,   upon  inductive 
inquiries.     And    all    of   us    are    aware,    in   a 
general  way,  of  what  is  meant  by  induction. 
When  one  collects  facts  of  experience  and  then 
infers,  with  greater  or  less  probability,  that 
some  proposition  relating   to   facts   not   yet 
observed,  or  relating  to  the  laws  of  nature, 
is  a   true  proposition,   the   thinking  process 
which  one  uses  is  called  inductive  reasoning. 
The  conditions  which  make  a  process  of  rea- 
soning  inductive   are    thus    twofold.      First, 
inductive  reasoning  is  based  upon  an  experi- 

'  Charles  Peirce  has  repeatedly  given  expression  to  the  thoughts 
about  the  nature  and  conditions  of  the  inductive  sciences  to  which 

Here  m  passing,  shaU  refer.  A  notable  expression  of  opinion 
upon  the  subject  occurs  in  a  brief  passage  contained  in  his  extremely 
jnterestmg  essay  entitled  "A  Neglected  Argument  for  the  Being  of 
^«Hl.    published  in  the  £^i66«rt  youmo/ during  1908. 

395 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

ence  of  particular  facts.  That  is,  inductions 
depend  upon  observations  or  experiments. 
Secondly,  what  one  concludes  or  infers,  from 
the  observations  or  experiments  in  ques- 
tion, follows  from  these  facts  not  necessarily, 
but  with  some  more  or  less  precisely  estimable 
degree  of  probability.  The  terms  "  inductive 
inference"  and  *' probable  inference"  are 
almost  precisely  equivalent  terms.^  If  you 
draw  from  given  premises  or  presuppositions  a 
conclusion  such  that,  in  case  the  premise  is 
true,  the  conclusion  must  be  true,  the  process 
of  reasoning  which  is  in  question  is  called 
"necessary  inference"  or  "deductive  infer- 
ence" (these  two  terms  being,  for  our 
present  purposes,  equivalent).  But  if,  upon 
assuming  certain  premises  to  be  true,  you 
find  that  they  merely  make  a  given  conclu- 
sion probable,  the  inference  which  guides  you 
to  the  conclusion  is  an  inductive  inference. 


*  Objections  to  an  assertion  of  the  precise  equivalence  of  the 
terms  "inductive  inference"  and  "probable  inference"  exist,  but 
need  not  be  discussed  in  the  present  connection,  since  they  are 
irrelevant  to  the  matter  which  Charles  Peirce's  comment  here  calls 
to  our  notice. 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 
Examples    of    such    inference    may    easily 
be  mentioned.     Thus  a  life  insurance  com- 
pany, m  assuming  new  risks,  and  in  comput- 
ing premiums,  is  guided  by  mortality  tables. 
Such  tables  summarize,  in  a  statistical  fash- 
ion,   facts    which    previous    experience    has 
furnished  regarding  the  ages  at  which  men 
have    died.     The    insurance    actuaries    com- 
pute, upon  the  basis  of  the  tables,  the  mor- 
talities of  men  who  are  yet  to  be  insured 
The  results  of  the  tables  and  of  the  com- 
putations are  probable  inferences  to  the  effect 
that  of  a  certain  number  of  men,  who  are 
now  in  normal  condition  and  who  are  of  a 
given  age,  a  certain  proportion  will  die  within 
a  year,  or  within  ten  years,  or  within  some 
other  chosen  interval  of  time.     Such  probable 
inferences  are  used,  by  the  insurance  company, 
in  determining  the  rate  at  which   it  is  safe 
to  insure  a  given  applicant  who  appears  to 
be,  upon  examination,  a  "good  risk"  for  his 
age.    Nobody  can  know  when  any  one  indi- 
vidual man  will  die ;    and  the  insurance  com- 
pany  draws    as   few   inferences    as   possible 

397 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

regarding  the  case  of  any  one  individual  man. 
But  the  premium  charged  to  the  individual 
man  who  wishes  to  insure  his  life  is  deter- 
mined by  the  fact  that  the  company  is  insur- 
ing, not  this  man  alone,  but  a  large  number 
of  men  at  about  the  same  time;    and  infer- 
ences   about    the    proportion    of    some    large 
number  of  men  who  will  die  within  a  year, 
or  within  ten  years,  can  be  rendered,  through 
the  use  of  good  methods,  very  highly  probable. 
Now   the   insurance  company's  processes   of 
inference   include   some   numerical   computa- 
tions   which,    within    certain    limits,    remain 
mainly    deductive.     For    the    outcome    of    a 
correct  numerical  computation  is,  when  con- 
sidered in  itself,  a  necessary  inference.     But 
the  principal  and  decisive  basis  of  the  insur- 
ance company's  inferences   is   such   that  the 
inferences  drawn  are  inductive  and  not  de- 
ductive.    That  is,  the  reasoning  of  the  insur- 
ance company  is  based  upon  particular  ob- 
served facts,  and  the  conclusions  drawn  are 
merely   probable   conclusions.     If   the    mor- 
tality tables  are  correct,  these  conclusions, 

398 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

when  applied  to  large  numbers  of  insured 
persons,  are  highly  probable.  They  are  never 
certain. 

What  the  insurance  companies  do  when 
they  reason  about  taking  new  risks  is  an 
example  of  a  method  widely  used  in  the 
natural  sciences.  A  collection  of  facts  of 
observation,  a  statistical  study  of  these  facts, 
and  a  probable  inference  based  upon  such 
statistics,  —  these,  in  many  cases,  make  up 
a  great  part  of  the  work  of  an  inductive 
science. 

VI 

But  the  statistical  methods  used  by  the 
insurance  companies  are  not  the  only  methods 
known  to  natural  science.  Another  sort  of 
probable  inference  is  also  known,  and  is,  in 
many  cases,  of  much  more  importance  for 
natural  science  than  is  the  more  directly 
statistical  method  which  the  insurance  com- 
panics  use.  This  other  method  is  known  to 
you  all.  It  is  the  method  of  forming  hy- 
potheses   and    of    testing    these    hypotheses 

399 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

by  comparing  their  results  with  experience. 
Let  me  mention  a  well-known  instance  of 
this  method.  We  can  then  see  how  it  con- 
trasts with  the  methods  most  frequently  used 
by  the  insurance  companies,  and  why  it  is 
a  valuable  method. 

An  enthusiastic  student  of  antiquity,  the 
now  celebrated  Schliemann,  was  deeply  influ- 
enced, a  half  century  ago,  by  the  hypothesis 
that  the  story  of  the  Trojan  war,  as  told  in 
the  "  lUad,"  had  a  substantial  basis  in  histori- 
cal   fact.     This    hypothesis    was    not    new; 
but  just   at   that    time    it    was    in    disfavor 
when  judged  in  the  light  of  the  prevailing 
opinions  of  the  classical  historians.     Schlie- 
mann gave  to  this  hypothesis  a  new  vivid- 
ness ;    for  he  was  an  imaginative  man.     But 
in  making  the  hypothesis  vivid,  he  made  it 
more  and  more  improbable  by  adding  to  it 
the  further  hypothesis  that  the  ancient  tra- 
dition as  to  the  site  of  Troy  was  also  his- 
torically  well  founded.     Having  formed  his 
hypothesis,  he  reasoned  in  a  way  that,  for 
our  momentary  purpose,  we  may  roughly  sum- 

400 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

marize  thus:  "If  the  Homeric  story  of  the 
Trojan  war  was  historically  well  founded, 
and  if  the  ancient  traditions  about  the  site 
of  the  real  Troy  were  also  true,  and  if  nothing 
has  since  occurred  to  render  unrecognizable 
the  ruins  which  were  left  when  Troy  was 
burned,  —  then,  in  case  I  dig  in  just  that 
mound,  yonder,  I  shall  find  the  ruins  of  a 
large  city,  which  once  contained  palaces 
and  treasures,  and  which  will  show  signs  of 
having  been  burned." 

Now  this  hypothesis  of  Schliemann  about 
Troy  was,  when  he  formed  or  reformed  his 
conjectures  upon  the  topic,  a  seemingly  very 
unlikely  hypothesis.  But  Schliemann  dug, 
and  the  now  well-known  ruins  came  to  light. 

Hereupon  you  will  all  agree  that,  from  the 
facts  of  experience  which  were  thus  pre- 
sented for  further  judgment,  no  important 
conclusion  could  be  said  to  follow  deductively 
and  as  a  necessary  condition.  And  as  a  fact 
Schliemann  is  known  to  have  overestimated 
both  the  probability  and  the  importance  of 
the  conclusions  which  he  himself  drew  from 


VOL.  II  —  2d 


401 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

his  discoveries.     Later  research  corrected  his 
conclusions   in    many    respects.     But    all    of 
us  will  agree  that  in  one  respect  Schliemann's 
success    when    his    excavations    were    made 
very  greatly  changed  the  probability  of  his 
own  assertion  that  the  Homeric  story  of  the 
Trojan    war    had    some    basis    in    historical 
facts.     What  he  said  was  :   "If  this  old  story 
is  true,  and  if  I  dig  in  yonder  mound,  such 
and  such  things   will  come  to  light."     The 
success  of  his  excavations,  the  fact  that  such 
things  as  he  had  predicted  actually  came  to 
light  when  he  dug,  —  all  this  did  not  demon- 
strate, but  did  make  probable,  the  assertion : 
"  This  old  story  has  a  real  basis  in  historical 
truth."     The  very  fact  that,  before  the  exca- 
vation   was    tried,    Schliemann's    hypothesis 
about  the  truth  of  the  old  story  of  the  sack  of 
Troy  seemed  improbable,  and  that  his  expec- 
tations of  success  in  digging  for  the  ruins  ap- 
peared extravagant  and  unwarranted,  —  this 
very   fact   made   his   actual    success   all   the 
more   significant.     Common    sense    at    once 
commented:      What  could  lead  to  such  an 

402 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

antecedently  unlikely  success  as  that  of 
Schliemann,  unless  the  idea  which  guided 
Schliemann's  excavations  had  some  basis  in 
fact .?  Nothing  was  demonstrated  by  Schlie- 
mann's first  discoveries.  But  a  new  probability 
had  henceforth  to  be  assigned  to  the  hypothesis 
which  had  led  to  Schliemann's  predictions 
and  discoveries,  —  namely,  that  some  his- 
torical foundation  existed  for  the  story  of  the 
Trojan  war. 

VII 

Schliemann's  triumph,  such  as  it  was,  is 
familiar.     It  furnishes  a  typical  instance  of 
the  second  of  the  two  leading  processes  of 
inductive  reasoning.     This  second  method  is 
that  of  hypothesis  and  test.     Suppose  that 
we  make  some  hypothesis  A.     Hereupon  sup- 
pose that  we  are  able  to  reason,  in  advance 
of  further  experience,  that  if  A  is  true,  some 
fact,  let  us  say  E,  will  be  observed,  in  case  we 
meet  certain  conditions  of  observation  or  of 
experiment.     Then,  the  more  unlikely  it  is, 
in  the  light  of  previous  knowledge,  that  the 

403 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

fact  E  should  be  observable  under  the  men- 
tioned conditions,  the  more  does  our  actual 
success  in  finding  the  fact  of  experience,  E, 
at  the  place  and  time  where  the  hypothesis 
had  led  us  to  look  for  it,  render  probable 
the  assertion  that  there  is  at  least  some  meas- 
ure of  truth  about  the  hypothesis  A. 

The  method  used  by  the  insurance  com- 
panies,   when    they    apply    facts    which    are 
summarized  in  the  mortality  tables  as  a  guide 
for    future    insurance    transactions,    depends 
upon  reasoning  from  experiences  which  we 
have   already   collected,    to    the   probability 
of  assertions  about  facts  which  are  as  yet 
unobserved.     The    other    method    of    induc- 
tion,—the  method  which,  in  his  own  way, 
Schliemann  exemplified,  follows  an  order  which 
is,  in  part,  the  reverse  of  the  order  of  the 
reasoning  process  which  the  insurance  com- 
panies  emphasize.     This   second   method   of 
induction    consists    in    first    inventing    some 
hypothesis  A,  which  is  adapted  to  the  pur- 
pose of  the  investigator.     Then  the  user  of 
this  method  discovers,  usually  by  some  pro- 

404 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

cess  of  deductive  reasoning,  that,  if  the  hy- 
pothesis A  is  true,  some  determinate  fact  of 
experience    E    will    be    found    under   certain 
conditions.     The  investigator  hereupon  looks 
for  this  predicted  fact  E.     If  he  fails  to  find 
it,   his   hypothesis   is   refuted,   and   he   must 
look  for  another.     But  if  he  finds  E  where  his 
hypothesis  had  bidden  him   to  look  for  E, 
then  the  hypothesis  A  begins  to  be  rendered 
probable.     And    the    more   frequently    A    is 
verified,  and  the  more  unexpected  and  ante- 
cedently  improbable  are  these   verifications, 
the   more   probable   does   the   hypothesis   A 
become. 

The  most  important  and  exact  results  of 
the  inductive  sciences  are  reached  by  methods 
in  which  the  verification  of  hypotheses  plays 
a  very  large  part.  Galileo  used  hypotheses, 
computed  what  the  results  would  be  in  case 
the  hypotheses  were  true,  and  then  by  fur- 
ther experience  verified  the  hypotheses.  So 
did  Newton ;  so  in  a  very  different  age,  and 
in  a  very  different  field,  did  Darwin.  Upon 
the  process  of  inventing  hypotheses,  of  com- 

405 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

puting  their  consequences,  and  of  then  appeal- 
ing to  experience  to  confirm  or  refute  the 
hypotheses,  the  greatest  single  advances  in 
physical   science   rest. 

And  the  principle  used  in  this  branch  of 
induction  may  be  stated  thus :  — 

When  without  any  antecedent  knowledge 
that  the  consequences  of  a  given  hypothesis 
are  true,  we  find,  upon  a  fair  examination  of 
the  facts,  that  these  consequences  are  un- 
expectedly verified,  then  the  hypothesis  in 
question  becomes,  not  certainly  true,  but 
more  and  more  probable. 

VIII 


These  general  remarks  about  the  inductive 
methods  used  in  science  may  seem  to  some  of 
you  to  be  mere  commonplaces.  But  they 
have  been  needed  to  bring  us  to  the  point 
where  Charles  Peirce's  remark  about  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  actual  successes  of  scientific 
method  can  at  length  be  appreciated. 

If  the  only  methods  followed  by  the  natural 

406 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

sciences  were  the  statistical  methods  of  the 
insurance    companies;     if    all    the    work    of 
scientific  induction  were  done,  first  by  making 
collections  of  facts,  such  as  mortality  tables 
exemplify,  and  secondly  by  making  probable 
predictions   about   the   future   based    mainly 
upon  the  already  observed  facts,  as  the  insur- 
ance  companies    issue    new   policies    on    the 
basis    of    the    already    existing    tables,    then 
indeed   the   work   of   the   inductive   sciences 
would  be  progressive,  but  it  would  not  be 
nearly  as  creative  as  it  actually  is. 

In  fact,  however,  the  inductive  sciences 
owe  their  greatest  advances  to  their  greatest 
inventors  of  hypotheses,  —  to  men  such  as 
Galileo  or  as  Darwin.  To  be  sure,  when  the 
inventors  of  scientific  hypotheses  are  in  ques- 
tion, these  inventors  must  also  be  not  only 
mventors,  but  also  verifiers,  and  must  be 
willing  readily  to  abandon  any  hypothesis 
whose  consequences  conflict  with  experience. 
But  since  it  is  the  actually  successful,  while 
far-reaching,  hypothesis  which  adds  the  most 
new  probabilities  to  science,  the  art  of  mak- 

407 


j 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

ing  great  advances,  especially  in  the  most 
exact  branches  of  physical  science,  must 
especially  depend  upon  the  power  to  invent 
fitting  hypotheses. 

Now  a  very  good  hypothesis  depends,  in 
general,  for  its  high  value,  first  upon  its 
novelty;  secondly,  upon  the  fact  that,  when 
duly  tested,  it  is  verified.  If  it  is  not  novel, 
the  verification  of  its  consequences  will  make 
comparatively  little  difference  to  the  science 
in  question.  If  it  cannot  be  verified,  and 
especially  if  experience  refutes  it,  it  does  not 
directly  contribute  to  the  progress  of  science. 
But  the  more  novel  an  hypothesis  is,  the  more 
in  advance  of  verification  must  it  appear 
improbable;  and  the  greater  are  the  risks 
which  its  inventor  seems  to  run  when  he 
first  proposes  it. 

IX 

Now  in  what  way  shall  a  good  inventor  of 
hypotheses  be  guided  to  his  invention  ?  Shall 
he  confine  himself  only  to  the  hypotheses 
which,    when   first   he  proposes   them,   seem 

408 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

antecedently  probable  ?     If  he  does  this,  he 
condemns  himself  to  relative  infertility.     For 
the  antecedently  probable  hypothesis  is  pre- 
cisely the  hypothesis  which  lacks  any  very 
notable  novelty.     Even  if  such  an  hypothesis 
bears  the  test  of  experience,  it  therefore  adds 
little  to  knowledge.     Worthless  for  the  pur- 
poses of  any  more  exact  natural  science  until 
it    has    been    duly    verified,    the  hypothesis 
which  is  to  win,  in  the  advancement  of  science, 
a  really  great  place,  must  often  be,  at  the 
moment  of  its  first  invention,  an  apparently 
unlikely    hypothesis,  —  a    poetical    creation, 
warranted  as  yet  by  none  of  the  facts  thus 
far  known,  and  subject  to  all  the  risks  which 
attend  great  human  enterprises  in  any  field. 
In  such  a  position  was  Darwin's  hypothesis 
regarding  the  origin  of  species  through  natural 
selection,  when  first  he  began  to  seek  for  its 
verification. 

This,  however,  is  not  all.  A  highly  signif- 
icant scientific  hypothesis  must  not  only  be 
a  sort  of  poetic  creation.  There  is  another 
consideration    to    be    borne    in    mind.     The 

409 


r 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

number  of  possible  new  hypotheses,  in  any 
large  field  of  scientific  inquiry,  is,  like  the 
number  of  possible  new  poems,  often  very 
great.  The  labor  of  testing  each  one  of  a 
number  of  such  hypotheses,  sufficiently  to 
know  whether  the  hypothesis  tested  is  or  is 
not  probably  true,  is  frequently  long.  And 
the  poetic  skill  with  which  the  hypotheses 
are  invented,  as  well  as  their  intrinsic  beauty, 
gives,  in  advance  of  the  test,  no  assurance 
that  they  will  succeed  in  agreeing  with  expe- 
rience. The  makers  of  great  scientific  hypoth- 
eses, —  the  Galileos,  the  Darwins,  —  are,  so 
to  speak,  poets  whose  inventions  must  be 
submitted  to  a  very  stern  critic,  namely,  to 
the  sort  of  experience  which  their  sciences 
use.  And  no  one  can  know  in  advance 
what  this  critic's  verdict  will  be.  Therefore, 
if  it  were  left  to  mere  chance  to  determine 
what  hypotheses  should  be  invented  and 
tested,  scientific  progress  would  be  very  slow. 
For  each  new  hypothesis  would  involve  new 
risks,  would  require  lengthy  new  tests,  and 
would  often  fail. 

410 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

As  a  fact,  however,  the  progress  of  natural 
science,   since   Galileo   began   his   work,   and 
smce  the  new  inductive  methods  were  first 
applied,  has  been  (so  Charles  Peirce  asserts) 
prodigiously  faster  than  it  could  have  been 
had  mere  chance  guided  the  inventive  pro- 
cesses of  the  greater  scientific  thinkers.     In 
view  of  these  facts,   Charles  Peirce  reasons 
that  the  actual  progress  of  science,  from  the 
sixteenth  century  until  now,  could  not  have 
been  what  it  is,  had  not  the  human  mind  been, 
as  he  says,  in  some  deep  way  attuned  to  the' 
nature  of  things.     The  mind  of  man  must  be 
peculiarly   fitted   to   invent   new   hypotheses 
such   that,   when  tested  by  experience,  they 
bear  the  test,  and  turn  out  to  be  probably 
true.     The    question    hereupon    arises,    "To 
what  is  this  aptness  of  the  human  mind  for 
the    invention   of    important   and   successful 
scientific  hypotheses   due?" 

X 

This  question  is  not  easy  to  answer.     Were 
new  hypotheses  in  science  framed  simply  by 

411 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

processes  analogous  to  those  which  the  insur- 
ance companies  employ  when  they  take  new 
risks,   the   matter   would   be   different.     For 
the  insurance  companies  adapt  the  existmg 
tables  of  mortahty  to  their  new  undertakings, 
or  else  obtain  modified  tables  gradually,  by 
a  mere  process  of  collection  and  arrangement. 
And  all  the  statistical  sciences  make  use  of 
this  method;  and  there  is,  of  course,  no  doubt 
that  this  method  of  gradual  advance,  through 
patient  collection  of  facts,  is  one  of  the  two 
great  sources  of  scientific  progress. 

But  the  other  method,  the  method  of 
inventing  new  hypotheses  which  go  beyond 
all  results  thus  far  obtained,  —  the  method 
which  first  proposes  and  then  tests  these  hy- 
potheses, —  involves  at  every  stage  a  venture 
into  an  unknown  sea.  Unless  some  deep- 
lying  motive  guides  the  inventor,  he  will  go 
uselessly  astray,  and  will  waste  his  efforts 
upon  inventions  which  prove  to  be  failures. 
In  many  branches  of  science  such  fortunes 
have  in  fact  long  barred  the  way.  Consider, 
for  instance,  the  fortunes  of  modern  patho- 

412 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

logical  research,  up  to  the  present  moment, 
in  dealing  with  the  problem  furnished  by  the 
existence  of  cancer.     The  most  patient  devo- 
tion to  details,  the  most  skilful  invention  of 
hypotheses,   has   so   far   led   only   to   defeat 
regarding  some  of  the  most  central  problems 
of  the  pathology  of  cancer.     These  problems 
may  be  solved  at  any  moment  in  the  near 
future.     But   up    to   this    time    it    seems- 
according   to  what   the   leading  pathologists 
tell  us  —  as  if  the  human  mind  had  not  been 
attuned  to  the  invention  of  fitting  hypothe- 
ses  regarding  the  most  fundamental  problems 
of  the  "cancer-research." 

How  different,  on  the  other  hand,  were  the 
fortunes  of  mechanics  from  Galileo's  time  to 
that  of  Newton.     What  wonderful  scientific 
inventiveness    guided    the    early    stages    of 
electrical    science.     How   rapidly   some   por- 
tions of  pathological  research  have  advanced. 
And,  according  to  Charles  Peirce,  in  all  these 
most   successful   instances   it    is   the    happy 
mstinct  for  inventing  the  hypotheses  which 
has  shortened  a  task  that,  if  left  to  chance 

413 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

and  to  patience,   would  have  proved  hope- 
lessly slow.     If  science  had  advanced  mainly 
by  the  successive  testing  of  all  the  possible 
hypotheses   in   any   given   field,   the   cancer- 
research,  in  its  period  of  tedious  trials  and 
errors,  and  not  the  physical  science  of  Galileo, 
with  its  dramatic  swiftness  of  progress,  nor 
yet  the  revolutionary  changes  due  to  the  in- 
fluence of  Darwin,  would  exemplify  the  ruling 
type  of  scientific  research.     But  as  a  fact, 
the  great  scientific  advances  have  been  due 
to  a  wonderful  skill  in  the  art  of  Galileo,  and 
of  the  other  leading  inventors  of  new  scien- 
tific ideas. 

The  present  existence,  then,  and  the  rapid 
progress  of  the  inductive  sciences,  have  been 
rendered  possible  by  an  instinctive  aptitude 
of  the  human  mind  to  shorten  the  labors  of 
testing  hypothesis  through  some  sort  of  native 
skill  in  the  invention  of  hypotheses  such  as  are 
capable  of  bearing  the  test  of  experience. 


414 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

XI 

Now  one  cannot  explain  the  existence  of 
such  an  aptitude  for  inventing  good  hypothe- 
ses by  pointing  out  that  the  processes  of  sci- 
ence are  simply  a  further  development  of  that 
gradual  adaptation  of  man  to  his  environment 
which  has  enabled  our  race  to  survive,  and 
which  has  moulded   us  to  our  natural  con- 
formity to  the  order  of  nature.     For  the  apti- 
tude to  invent  scientific  hypotheses  is  not  like 
our  power  to  find  our  way  in  the  woods,  or 
to  get  our  food,   or  even   to  create  and  to 
perpetuate  our  ordinary  social  orders.     Each 
new  scientific  hypothesis  of  high  rank  is  a 
new  creation   which   is   no   mere   readapting 
of  habits   slowly   acquired.     The   conditions 
which  enable  the  creator  of  the  hypothesis 
to  invent  it  never  existed  before  his  time. 
Human  beings  could  have  continued  to  exist 
indefinitely    had     Galileo     never    appeared. 
Science  gets  what  may  be  called  its  "survival 
value"  only  after  its  hypotheses  have  been 
invented   and   tested.     Without  science,   the 

415 


It 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

race  could  have  found  its  food,  and  been 
moulded  to  its  environment,  for  indefinitely 
numerous  future  ages.  Natural  selection 
could  never,  by  itself,  have  produced,  through 
merely  favoring  the  survival  of  skilful  warriors 
or  of  industrious  artisans,  the  genius  which 
was  so  attuned  to  the  whole  nature  of  things 
as  to  invent  the  atomic  hypothesis,  or  to 
discover  spectrum-analysis,  or  to  create  elec- 
trical science.  Our  science  invents  hypoth- 
eses about  phenomena  which  are,  in  appear- 
ance, utterly  remote  from  our  practical  life. 
Only  after  a  new  science,  such  as  that  of 
electricity,  has  grown  out  of  this  mysterious 
attuning  of  man's  creative  powers  to  the 
whole  nature  of  the  physical  universe,  then, 
and  only  then,  does  this  science  prove,  in  its 
applications,  to  be  useful. 

We  can  therefore  here  sum  up  the  matter 
by  saying  that  the  natural  world  has  some- 
how created,  in  man,  a  being  who  is  apt  for 
the  task  of  interpreting  nature.  Man's  in- 
terpretation is  halting  and  fallible;  but  it 
has   shown    itself,    since   Galileo's   time,    too 

416 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

rapidly  progressive  in  its  invention  of  suc- 
cessful hypotheses  to  permit  us  to  regard 
this  aptitude  as  the  work  of  chance.  Man's 
gradual  adjustment  to  his  natural  environ- 
ment may  well  explain  his  skill  as  artisan, 
or  as  mere  collector  and  arranger  of  natural 
facts,  but  cannot  explain  the  origin  of  his 
power  to  invent,  as  often  and  as  wonder- 
fully as  he  has  invented,  scientific  hypotheses 
about  nature  which  bear  the  test  of  ex- 
perience. 

XII 

If,  then,  you  seek  for  a  sign  that  the  uni- 
verse contains  its  own  interpreter,  let  the  very 
existence   of  the   sciences,   let   the   existence 
of   the    happy    inventive    power    which    has 
made  their  progress  possible,  furnish  you  such 
a  sign.     A  being  whom  nature  seems  to  have 
intended,    in    the   first   place,    simply   to    be 
more  crafty   than   the   other   animals,   more 
skilful   in   war  and   in  hunting,   and  in   the 
arts    of   living   in    tribal    unities,    turns    out 
to  be  so  attuned  to  the  whole  of  nature  that. 


VOL.  II  —  2  E 


417 


»l 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

when    he    once    gets    the    idea    of    scientific 
research,  his  discoveries  soon  relate  to  phys- 
ical  matters   as  remote    from    his    practical 
needs  as  is  the  chemical  constitution  of  the 
nebulae,  or  as  is  the  origin  and  destiny  of  this 
earth,  or  as  is  the  state  of  the  natural  universe 
countless  ages  ago  in  the  past.     In  brief,  man 
is  not  what  he  seems,  a  creature  of  a  day, 
but  is  known  to  be  an  interpreter  of  nature. 
He  is  full  of  aptitudes  to  sound  the  depths  of 
time  and  of  space,  and  to  invent  hypotheses 
which  it  will  take  ages  to  verify,  but  which 
will,  in  a  vast  number  of  cases,  be  verified. 
Full   of   wonders   is   nature.     But   the   most 
wonderful  of  all  is  man   the  interpreter,  — 
a  part  and  a  member  (if  our  philosophy  is 
right)  of  the  world's  infinite  Community  of 
Interpretation. 

The  very  existence  of  natural  science, 
then,  is  an  illustration  of  our  thesis  that  the 
universe  is  endlessly  engaged  in  the  spiritual 
task  of  interpreting  its  own  life. 


418 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

XIII 

The  older  forms  of  teleology,   often  used 
by   the   theologians   of   the   past,    frequently 
missed  the  place  where  the  empirical  illustra- 
tions of  the  workings  of  intelligence,  in  the 
universe,  and  where  the  signs  of  the  life  of  the 
divine   spirit   are   most   to   be   sought.     The 
teleology  of  the  future  will  look  for  illustrations 
of  the  divine,  and  of  design,  neither  in  miracles 
nor  in  the  workings  of  any  continuously  striv- 
ing '*will-  or  -vital  impulse"  which  from  mo- 
ment to  moment  moulds  things  so  as  to  meet 
present  needs,  or  to  guide  present  evolution. 

Man,  as  we  have  seen,  has  an  aptitude  to 
invent  hypotheses  that,  when  once  duly  tested, 
throw  light  on  things  as  remote  in  space  as 
are  the  nebulae,  as  distant  in  time  as  is  the 
origin  of  our  whole  stellar  system.     This  ap- 
titude lies  deep  in  human  nature.     Its  exist- 
ence is  indeed  no  miraculous  event  of  to-day. 
Man's  power  to  interpret  his  world  has  some- 
how evolved  with  man.     The  whole  natural 
world  of  the  past  has  been  needed  to  produce 

419 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

man   the   Interpreter.     On   the   other   hand, 
this  power  of  man  cannot  have  been  the  result 
of  any  "vital  impulse"  "canalizing"    matter 
or  otherwise  blindly  striving  continuously  and 
tentatively  for  light.     For  this  scientific  apti- 
tude of  man  links  him  even  now  with  the 
whole  time-order.     He  is  so  attuned  by  nature 
that,  imperfect  as  he  now  is,  he  is  adapted 
to  be  or  to  become,  in  his  own  halting  way, 
but  not  in  totally  blind  fashion,  an  inter- 
preter of  the  meaning  of  the  whole  of  time. 
Now  such  a  teleological  process  as  this  which 
man's  scientific  successes  express,  illustrates 
the  teleology  of  a  spiritual  process  which  does 
not  merely,  from  moment  to  moment,  adapt 
itself  to  a  preexistent  world.      Nor  does  this 
process   appear   as   merely   one   whereby   an 
unconscious  impulse  squirms  its  way  through 
the  "canals"  which  it  makes  in  matter.     No, 
this  teleology  appears  to  illustrate  a  spiritual 
process   which,    in   its    wholeness,   interprets 
at  once  the  endless  whole  of  time.' 

1  WhUe  I  write  these  words,  a  colleague  of  mine,  Professor  L.  J. 
Henderson,  is  publishing  a  book,  entitled  "The  Fitness  of  the  Env,- 

420 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

XIV 

I  have  spent  most  of  our  brief  time,  in  our 
closing  lecture,  in  illustrations  of  our  meta- 

ronment,"  wherein  he  points  out  that  however  we  may  i„terp«.t  the 
^ts    U.e«  exisu,  in  the  natural  world,  an  i„sUn«  of  Tp^l^ 

described     This  mstance,  v,ewed  by  itself,  furnishes  no  proof  of  our 

furnishes  an  .llustration  of  the  sort  of  evidence  for  teleolo^  wwlt 

^•n         T'     :  '^'-'°«*-"^  *»P«-d  philosopher  of  ^e  7lt 
wiU  ponder,  and  will  interpret. 

\yhat  Professor  Hendereou  pomts  out  U  that  the  physico-chemical 
c«nst,tut.on  of  the  whole  natural  world,  so  far  as  thTt  worT'::^   • 
«ble  to  sc,ent,fic  study,  is  "p:«.daptcd."  is  "fitted"  to  be  an  enW 
ment  for  avu.gbe.ng3.    This  "fitness"  is  of  a  m.tu^  which  caTot 
have  resulted  from  the  processes  whe,.by  life  has  been  evTe^ 
The  same  fitness  .nvolves  an  union  of  many  diffe.,„t  physicoll^ 
ical  properties  of  the  environment  of  living  beings       ^^  '^''^"°- 
eompUcated  that  one  <^ot  suppose  it  .J^Z'ZTZr, 
the  ong,n  of  th,s  fitness  must  have  p,^ed  by  counUess  .g«  alv 

hfe  ,Uelf  ever  had  an  ongin,  the  physical  world  was  thus,  in  a  ma  Jr 
which  .  new  to  us,  inexplicably  p^adapted  to  the  coming  lifeTan 
mdefimtely  vast  period  before  the  Ufe  appea.,^.  „  LVi  Z 
Arrhemus  has  supposed)  no  origin  whatever,  the  fitness  of  the  e„^ 

mt^'lT.  ?""r°  ""'"''  ""'■  "^^  "^'"^  "'  the  environ- 
ment   which  he  has  thus  discovers!  is  so  vast  and  pervasive  and  « 

mcpaWe  of  explanation  in  "viulistic"  terms  as  to^ndcr     1  f:^: 

of  vital^m  (including  that  of  Bergson)  superfluous  as  explanat^^ 

world  which  IS  once  for  all.  as  Professor  Hender«,n  points  out. 

421 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

man    the   interpreter.     On   the   other   hand, 
this  power  of  man  cannot  have  been  the  result 
of  any  "vital  impulse"  "canalizing"    matter 
or  otherwise  blindly  striving  continuously  and 
tentatively  for  light.     For  this  scientific  apti- 
tude of  man  links  him  even  now  with  the 
whole  time-order.     He  is  so  attuned  by  nature 
that,  imperfect  as  he  now  is,  he  is  adapted 
to  be  or  to  become,  in  his  own  halting  way, 
but  not  in  totally  blind  fashion,   an  inter- 
preter of  the  meaning  of  the  whole  of  time. 
Now  such  a  teleological  process  as  this  which 
man's  scientific  successes  express,  illustrates 
the  teleology  of  a  spiritual  process  which  does 
not  merely,  from  moment  to  moment,  adapt 
itself  to  a  preexistent  world.      Nor  does  this 
process   appear   as   merely   one   whereby   an 
unconscious  impulse  squirms  its  way  through 
the  "canals"  which  it  makes  in  matter.     No, 
this  teleology  appears  to  illustrate  a  spiritual 
process    which,    in    its    wholeness,    interprets 
at  once  the  endless  whole  of  time.^ 

1  WMle  I  write  these  words,  a  colleague  of  mine,  Professor  L.  J. 
Henderson,  is  publishing  a  book,  entitled  "The  Fitness  of  the  Envi- 

420 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

XIV 

I  have  spent  most  of  our  brief  time,  in  our 
closmg  lecture,  in  illustrations  of  our  meta- 

adaptation  w^'h:  teTZlT'  7  'T''''  ^^  ^^^^^^^ 
described      Th;«  '  T  °  "^'^'^^  apprehended  and 

«ble  to  acientifie  .tudy,  i.  "p^adapted."  U  "fit^^   Ll  "  '"^   ' 
ment  for  living  beings     This  "fitn..    •        ,  to  be  an  environ- 

have  „.u,ted'fron>''the  l^7.Zy  ^f^::'^'^  T"' 
The  sa„e  fitness  involve  an  union  of  mTnyU'L^  nt"'  J^' 
.eal  properties  of  the  environment  of  living  beZ  '"'^""^''*- 
compUcated  that  one  cannot  suppose  it  duel  e^l""  ZTZ^" 
the  ongm  of  this  fitness  must  have  Dre«Hl~l  h  ,  ^ 

Physical  event  of  which  we  nowZve^  pi^f  "'.T  ""^ 
Ufe  itseU  ever  had  an  origin,  the  physiea  1^  l^^  a^'  " 
which  is  new  to  us.  inexplicably  preadaoted  ,„  r^  .        ""^ 

indefinitely  vast  PeH J  befo«' thTtff^p^'^  ~;7/''^ '7- 
Arrhenius  has  supposed)  no  origin  ^iu^t^ZZTstll^'  '" 
ronment  which  is  here  in  question,  being  d;e  neitrerto  ,7  ""' 
ch-nce  remains  a  p.blem  .quiring  scientific  ij  bm  ^  Z-, 
pronusmg  no  scientific  solution.  P"*"* 

As  Professor  Henderson  points  out,  the  "fitness  of  th.  • 
menf  which  he  has  thus  discovered  is  so  vast trpe^^ive  ^r 
mcapabie  of  explanation  in  "viulistic"  term.  .  .  '^"f"'^'  *°<'  «> 
of  vitalism  (including  that  of  BeZn)  sZrT  """"  ""  '""" 
0^  the  true  mutual  fitness  of  o-^anisTand  e^  Z,"  TT'^, 
world  which  is  once  for  aU,  as  Professor  Henrn  '^ITTu 

421 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

physical  doctrine.  For  it  is  needful  to  leave 
this  doctrine  in  your  minds  as  one  which  calls 
attention  to  an  essentially  new  aspect  of 
philosophical  idealism,  as  well  as  to  a  doctrine 

of  Life. 

Time,  Interpretation,  and  the  Community, 
and  finally,  The  World  as  a  Community,  — 
these  have  been  the  central  ideas  of  the  meta- 
physical portion  of  our  course.  We  have 
everywhere  pointed  out,  as  we  went,  the  con- 
nection between  these  ideas  and  the  ethical 
and  religious  interests  which  we  have  also  ex- 
pounded and  defended.     Our  last  words  of 

"biocentric,"  why  seek  any  longer  after  special  vitalistic  explanations 
for  special  instances  of  adaptation  ? 

My  own  view  of  the  relation  of  Professor  Henderson's  discovery 
to  the  sort  of  philosophy  which  these  lectures  have  defended,  is  that 
here  we  have  just  that  sort  of  preadaptation  of  earlier  stages  of  the 
time-process  to  later  stages  which  of  course  does  not  prove,  but  does 
illustrate,  our  own  view  of  the  time-process.  Professor  Henderson's 
"fitness  of  the  environment"  is  analogous  to  Charles  Peirce's  "at- 
tuning" of  the  human  mind  to  the  universe  which  our  sciences  pro- 
gressively mterpret.  Whatever  ebe  Ufe  is,  it  contains  the  natural 
conditions  for  an  interpretation  of  the  world.  What  Professor 
Henderson's  facts,  and  Charles  Peirce's  facts,  do  not  prove,  but 
iUustrate,  is  our  philosophical  thesis  that  the  time-world  viewed  as 
a  whole,  or  in  verj'  long  stretches,  is  a  process  which  possesses,  and 
includes,  not  mere  miracles  and  efforts  and  vital  impulses,  but  a 
total  meaning  and  a  coherent  interpretation. 

422 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

all  must  relate  to  the  practical  consequences 
which  follow  for  us,  and  for  our  present  age, 
if  our  view  of  the  historical  mission  of  Chris- 
tianity is  true,  and  if  the  form  of  idealism ,  which 
we  have  here  expounded,  rightly  states  the 
relation   of  the   Christian   ideas   to   the  real 
world.     Let  me  sum  up  these  practical  con- 
sequences as  briefly  as  I  can.     In  sum,  they 
amount  to  two  maxims. 

In    the    past,    the    teaching    of    Christian 
doctrine  has  generally  depended  upon  some 
form   of   Christology.      In   recent   times   the 
traditional  problems  of  Christology  have  be- 
come, in  the  light  of  our  whole  view  of  the 
world,  of  mankind,  and  of  history,  increas- 
ing|j    diflScuIt     and     perplexing.       Whoever 
asserts  that,  at  one  moment  of  human  his- 
tory, and  only  at  that  one  moment,  an  unique 
bemg,  at  once  an  individual  man,  and  at  the 
same  time  also  God,  appeared,  and  performed 
the  work  which  saved  mankind,  —  whoever, 
I  say,  asserts  this  traditional  thesis,  involves 
himself    in    historical,    in    metaphysical,    in 
technically    theological,    and    in    elementally 

423 


ibititb^iild^ttgJUkgM^Ai^^Ml^^WB 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

religious    problems,    which    all    advances    in 
our  modern  sciences  and   in   our  humanities, 
in  our  spiritual  life  and  in  our  breadth  of 
outlook  upon  the  universe,  have  only  made, 
for  the  followers  of  tradition,  constantly  harder 
to  face  and  to  solve.     The  first  of  our  practical 
maxims  is :    Simplify  your  traditional  Chris- 
tology,  in  order  thereby  to  enrich  its  spirit.     The 
religion  of  loyalty  has  shown  us  the  way  to  this  end. 
Henceforth  our  religion  must  more  and  more 
learn  to  look  upon  the  natural  world  as  in- 
finite both  in  space  and  in  time,  and  upon 
the  salvation  of  man  as  something  bound  up 
with  the  interpretation  of  an  infinitely  rich 
realm  of  spiritual  life,  —  a  realm  whose  char- 
acter the  legends  of  early  Christian  tradition 
did  not  portray   with  literal   truth.     There- 
fore, if  religious  insight  is  indeed  to  advance, 
and  if  the  spirit  of  Christianity  is  to  keep  in 
touch  with  the  growing  knowledge  of  man- 
kind,   the    Christology    of    the   future    cannot 
permanently  retain  the  traditional  forms  which 
have  heretofore  dominated  the  history  both  of 
dogma,  and  of  the  visible  Christian  church. 

424 


ittttiii 


'^StiSSSS^^ 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 
And  yet,  if  our  previous  account  of  the 
Christian  ideas  has  been  sound,  the  Chris- 
tology  of  the  past  has  been  due  to  motives 
which  are  perfectly  verifiable  in  human  reli- 
gious  experience,    and    which   can    be   inter- 
preted   in   terms    of  a   rationally  defensible 
philosophy  both  of  life  and  of  the  universe. 
As  a  fact,  whatever  Christology  Paul,  or  any 
later   leader  of   Christian   faith,  has   taught, 
and  whatever  religious  experience  has  been 
used  by  the  historical  church,  or  by  any  of 
its   sects   or  of  its   visible  forms,   as  giving 
warrant  for  the  Christological  opinions,  the 
literal  and  historical  fa^t  has  always  been  this, 
that  in  some  fashion  and  degree  those  who  have 
thus  believed  in   the  being  whrnn  they  called 
Christ,   were   united  in   a   community   of  the 
faithful,  were   in   love   with   that   community, 
were  hopefully  and  practically  devoted  to  the 
cause  of  the  still  invisibU,  but  perfectly  real  and 
divine   Universal  Community,  and  were  saved 
h  the  faith  and  by  the  life  which  they  thus 
expressed. 

Now  in  general,  whatever  else  they  held 

425 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

to  be  true,  all  the  communities  of  Christian 
believers  have  viewed  their  Christ  as  the 
being  whose  life  was  a  present  fact  in  their 
community,  inspiring  its  doings,  uniting  its 
members,  and  pointing  beyond  the  little 
company  of  the  present  believers  to  the  ideal 
communion  of  all  the  saints,  and  to  the  tri- 
umph of  the  Spirit. 

Now  if  my  account  of  the  matter  is  well 
founded,    the   fact    that    believers    have    ex- 
pressed  their   views   about   Christ   in   terms 
which    involved    symbols,    legends,    doubtful 
dogmas,  and  endlessly  perplexing  theological 
problems    need    not    obscure    from    us    any 
longer  a  truth  which  is  verifiable,  is  literal, 
and  is  saving.     This  is  the  one  truth  which 
has  always  been  grasped,  in  a  concrete  and 
practical  form,  whenever  the  religion  of  loy- 
alty has  found  on  earth  its  own.     The  name 
of  Christ  has  always  been,  for  the  Christian 
believers,  the  symbol  for  the  Spirit  in  whom  the 
faithful  —  that   is   to  say   the  hyal  — always 
are  and  have  been  one. 

Now  the  first  practical  result  of  recogniz- 

426 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

ing  that  in  this  faith  lies  the  genuine  meaning 
which  has  lain  beneath  all  the  various  and 
perplexing  Christologies  of  the  past  is,  other- 
wise, expressed  thus :    It  is  unwise  to  try  to 
express   this   genuinely  catholic  faith   of  all 
the  loyal  by  attempting  to  form  one  more 
new  sect.     I  do  not  wish  to  see  any  such  new 
sect,  or  to  hear  of  one.     It  is  needless  to  ex- 
pect that  those  whom  tradition  now  satisfies 
will  at  present  first  abandon  tradition  in  or- 
der  to  learn  the  truth  which,  in  their  heart  of 
hearts,  they  know  that  tradition  has  always 
symbolized.     If   men   are   loyal,   but   are  in 
doubt  as  to  traditional  theology,  it  is  a  waste 
of  time  to  endeavor  to  prove  the  usual  theses 
of  dogmatic  Christology  by  any  collection  of 
accessible  historical  evidences.     Such  histori- 
cal   evidences    are    once    for    all    insufficient. 
The  existing  documents  are  too  fragmentary. 
The  historical  hypotheses  are  too  shifting  and 
evanescent.     And  if  it  is  faith  that  is  to  be, 
in  Christological  matters,  the  real  substance  of 
things  hoped  for  and  the  evidence  of  things 
not  seen,  what  faith  has  ever  been  more  Chris- 

427 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

tian  in  spirit,  more  human  in  its  verifiability, 
more  universal,  more  saving,  more  concrete, 
than  the  faith  of  the  Pauline  churches  ?     Our 
practical  maxim  is :    Hold  fast  by  that  faith. 
What  is  practically  necessary  is  therefore 
this:    Let  your  Christology  be  the  practical 
acknowledgment  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Universal 
and  Beloved  Community.  This  is  the  suflScient 
and  practical  faith.     Love  this  faith,  use  this 
faith,  teach  this  faith,  preach  this  faith,  in 
whatever  words,  through  whatever  symbols, 
by  means  of  whatever  forms  of  creeds,  in  ac- 
cordance  with   whatever  practices  best  you 
find  to  enable  you  \\ath  a  sincere  intent  and 
a  whole  heart  to  symbolize  and  to  realize  the 
presence   of   the   Spirit   in   the   Community. 
All  else  about  your  religion  is  the  accident 
of  your   special   race   or   nation   or   form  of 
worship    or   training   or   accidental   personal 
opinion,  or  devout  private  mystical  experi- 
ence, —  illuminating    but    capricious.       The 
core,  the  center  of  the  faith,  is  not  the  per- 
son of  the  individual  founder,  and  is  not  any 
other  individual  man.     Nor  is  this  core  to 

428 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 
be  found  in  the  sayings  of  the  founder,  nor 
yet  in   the  traditions  of  Christology.    \  The 
core  of  the  faith  is  the  Spirit,  the  Beloved 
Community,  the  work  of  grace,  the  atoning 
deed,  and  the  saving  power  of  the  loyal  life. 
There  is  nothing  else  under  heaven  whereby ' 
men  have  been  saved  or  can  be  saved.     To 
say  this  is  to  found  no  new  faith,  but  to  send 
you  to  the  heart  of  all  true  faith. 

This  is  no  vague  humanitarianism,  is  no 
worship    of    the    mere    natural    being    called 
humanity,  and  is  no  private  mystic  experience. 
This  is  a  creed  at  once  human,  divine,  and 
practical,  and  religious,  and  universal.     Assim- 
ilate  and   apply   this   creed,    and   you   have 
grasped  the  principle  of  Christian  institutional 
life  in  the  past,  and  the  principle  which  will 
develop   countless   new   religious   institutions 
in  the  future,  and  which  will  survive  them. 

The  first  of  my  practical  concluding  maxims 
may  be  stated  thus:  Interpret  Christianity 
and  all  the  problems  of  its  Christology  in 
this  spirit,  and  you  will  aid  towards  the  one 
crowning  office  of  all  human  religion.     You 

429 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

will    win    membership    in    the    one    invisible 

church.  

I^-second  maxim  is  this  :   Look  forward  to 
the  human  and  visible  triumph  of  no  form  of 
the  Christian  church.     Still  less  look  to  any 
sect,  new  or  old,  as  the  conqueror.     Hence- 
forth view  the  religious  ideal  as  one  which, 
in  the  future,  is  to  be  won,  if  at  all,  by  methods 
distinctively  analogous  to  the  methods  which 
now  prevail  in  the  sciences  of  nature.     It  is 
not  my  thought  that  natural  science  can  ever 
displace  religion  or  do  its  work.     But  what  I 
mean  is  that  since  the  office  of  religian^2!3^ 
aim   towards   the   creation   on   earth   of  the 
Beloved  Community,  the  future  task  of  reli- 
gion is  the  task  of  inventing  and  applying  the, 
arts  which  shall  win  men  over  to  unity,  and 
which  shall  overcome  their  original  hateful- 
ness  by  the  gracious  love,  not  of  mere  indi- 
viduals, but  of  communities.     Now  such  arts 
are  still  to  be  discovered.     Judge  every  social 
device,  every  proposed  reform,  every  national 
and  every  local  enterprise  by  the  one  tes^J/ 
Does  this  help  towards  the  coming  of  the  uni- 

430 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

versal  community.      If  you   have   a    church, 
judge  your  own  church    by    this    standard; 
and  if  your  church  does  not  yet  fully  meet 
this   standard,    aid   towards   reforming  your 
church  accordingly.     If,  like  myself,  you  hold 
the  true  church   to   be  invisible,  require  all 
whom  you  can  influence  to  help  to  render  it 
visible.     To  do  that,  however,  does  not  mean 
that  you  shall  either  conform  to  the  church 
as  it  is,  or  found  new  sects.     If  the  spirit  of 
scientific  investigation,  or  of  learned  research, 
shows  signs  —  as  it  already  does  —  of  becom- 
ing one  of  the  best  of  all  forms  of  unifying 
mankind  in  free  loyalty,  then  regard  science 
not  merely  as  in  possible  harmony  with  reli- 
gion, but  as  itself  already  one  of  the  principal 
organs  of  religion.     Aid  toward  the  coming_, 
of  the  universal  community  by  helping  to  make 
the  work  of  religion  not  only  as  catholic  as  is 
already  the  true  spirit  of  loyalty,  but  as  in- 
ventive of  new  social  arts,  as  progressive  as 
is  now  natural   science.     So  shall  you  help 
in  making,  not  merely  happy  individuals  (for 
no   power   can   render   detached    individuals 

431 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

permanently  happy,  or  save  them  from  death 
or  from  woe).  You  shall  aid  towards  the 
unity  of  spirit  of  those  who  shall  be  at  once 
free  and  loyal. 

We  can  look  forward,  then,  to  no  final  form, 
either  of  Christianity  or  of  any  other  special 
religion.  But  we  can  look  forward  to  a  time 
when  the  work  and  the  insight  of  religion 
can  become  as  progressive  as  is  now  the  work 
of  science. 


INDEX 


Agitator,      modem,      illustrating 
strife     between     individualism 
and  collectivism,  I  154  f. 
Altruism,  misunderstood  as  Chris- 
tian love,  I  79 ;    insufficient  to 
check  influence  of  cultivation. 
188. 
Amos,  II  190. 
Apocalyptic    vision    of    the    true 

church,  I  58  ;  II  386. 
Apologist,  attitude  of,  towards 
Christianity,  I  6  S.,  9,  10  f., 
403  fF.,  413 ;  the  three  central 
Christian  ideas  misunderstood 
by,  44  f. ;  II  390. 
Aristotle,  on  communities,  I  61  ; 

his  ideal  of  beatitude,  190  f. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  his  "St.  Paul 
and     Protestantism"     quoted, 
I  217  ff. ;    his  modern  view  of 
sin,  221  ff . ;  this  view  criticised, 
224  B. ;    this  view  applied  to 
moral    treason,    257    ff. ;     the 
hypothetical  traitor's  answer  to, 
259  ff.;  362. 
Atonement,  I  Lecture  VI ;  limita- 
tions of  the  problem,  272;  ap- 
plication to  the  "traitor,"  270 
flf.;  Christian  idea  of,  283  flF.  ; 
as  "penal  satisfaction,"  284  f. ; 
"moral  theories"  of,  288  f. ;  not 
a    problem    of    "forgiveness," 
297,    301 ;    a   human   problem, 
304  ff. ;  real  essence  of,  311  ff., 
illustrated     by    the    story    of 
Joseph  and  his  brethren,  365  ff . ; 
relation    between    the    human 
and    the    Christian    form    of, 
318  ff. ;    human   form   of,   ex- 
pressed in  a  postulate,  322 ;  re- 
lation of  community  to,  361  ff.  : 
II  378. 

2f  433 


Bach's  Passion  Music,  applied  to 
the  moral  tragedy  of  the  traitor, 
I  274  ff. 
Bastian,  ethnologist,  II  29. 
Beethoven,  his  Fifth  Symphony, 
illustrating  process  of  interpre- 
tation, II  191. 
"Beloved      Community,      The," 
loyalty    to,    I    172;    contrasted 
with  loyalty  to  individuals,  173; 
contrasted  with    natural  social 
groups,  183  ;   as  ideal  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  352,  357 ;  as  Com- 
munity   of    Interpretation,    II 
219,  428.     [See  Community.] 
Bergson,  I  418  ;  II  32,  34  ;  stating 
opposition  between  conception 
and    perception,    118    f.,    124, 
126  ff.,    135,  139;    his  view  of 
reality  as  change,  154  f.,  159  ;  his 
glorification  of  instinct,  189;  il- 
lustrating office  of   interpreta- 
tion,   256  ff.,  261  ff.,  285;  his 
pragmatism  and  mysticism,  307 
f.,  323,  421. 
Brooding,  over  sin,  I  208  ff.,  245, 

362  f. 
Bryant,  II  28. 

Buddhism,   its   escape   from   the 
"moral   burden,"   I   189,   407; 
Nirvana,        contrasted       with 
Pauline  Charity,   190  f . ;  com- 
pared with  Christianity,  332  ff., 
362,  contrasted,  339  ff. ;  salva- 
tion through  loyalty  not  taught 
by,  345,  363;  II  12,  266;  self- 
denial  of,  306. 
Burden,  moral,  of  the  Individual, 
I  Locturn  III ;  in  relation  to  the 
Apostle  Paul,  117  ff. ;  produced 
by  conflict  between  social  will 
and  self-will,  140  ff. ;  as  burden 


INDEX 


of  the  race,  152 ;  Paul's  escape 
from,  through  loyalty,  158  f. 


Charity,  Pauline,  in  relation  to 
loyalty,    I    171 ;    conceived    as 
absolute  loyalty,  and  opposed 
to  Nirvana,   190  f.,  328.  352; 
as  emotion  and  interpretation, 
II  98,  325.     [See  Paul.] 
Christianity,  attitude  of  apologist 
towards,  I  6  f.,  9, 11  ff. ;  attitude 
of    opponent    towards,     8    f . ; 
as   men's   vision   of   salvation, 
10  f.;  in  relation  to  the  "modern 
man,"  19  ff . ;  as  merely  a  per- 
sonal religion,  22  ff. ;  as  inter- 
preted doctrine,  25;  three  cen- 
tral ideas  of,  outlined,  35,  45; 
primitive,  involving  idea  of  the 
Church,  52  ff. ;  new  beginning 
of,  with  Paul's  doctrine  of  love, 
93;     "moral    burden"    of    the 
individual  in  relation  to.  Lec- 
ture III :  conceived  as  religion 
of  loyalty,    193   ff.,    213;   two 
levels    of    consciousness    com- 
pared with  the  two  "  natures" 
of  Christ,  203     ff. ;  influenced 
by  ethical  Judaism,  240  f  ;  inter- 
pretation of  Atonement  theory 
of,  318  ff. ;  its  Doctrine  of  Life, 
Lecture    VII;      in    agreement 
with    Buddhism,    332    ff.,    in 
contrast,      339     ff. ;      essential 
morals  of,  359  ff. ;  ideas  of,  in 
relation  to  the  Modern  Mind, 
Lecture  VIII ;  future  of.  394  ff.; 
II  421  ff. ;  relation  between  his- 
tory  and    essence   of.    Lecture 
XV,  illustrated  by  a  fictitious 
Pauline  Christian,  344  ff. ;  first 
maxim    for    the    progress    of, 
424   ff.,   second,   430  ff.      [See 
Problem  of  Christianity.] 
"  Christologies,  Ancient  and  Mod- 
ern,"   by    Sanday,    quoted,    II 
329. 
Christology,  necessity  of  simplify- 
ing, II  424  ff. 
Church,  The,  doctrine  of,  I  38  f., 
348  ff . ;  conceived  as  Kingdom  of  | 

434 


Heaven,  50  f .,  349  ff. ;  difference 
between    the    letter    and    the 
spirit  of,  54  ff. ;  conceived  by 
Paul  as  Univ(  rsal  Community, 
94  f.,  98.  110,  406,  417 ;  loyalty 
to,  99  ff.,    158  f.,  202  ff. ;    as 
"Beloved  Community,"  183  ff.; 
as  means  of  grace  and  salvation. 
213,  225,  376;  II  38;  and  the 
modern    mind,     I     395.     411; 
memory  of  the  Pauline.  II  69  ff . ; 
not     only     as    community    of 
memory,  but  also  as  community 
of  hope,  72  ff. ;  as  Community 
of    Interpretation,     219.    254; 
Pauline,  founder  of  Christianity, 
338   f. ;     fictitious   member   of 
the  Pauline,  illustrating  essence 
of  Christianity,  344  ff. ;  loyalty 
to  no  final  form  of,  430  ff. 
Cognition,    dual    contrast   of,    II 
121     ff. ;     inadequate    to    life, 

188  ff. 

Collectivism,  contrasted  with  In- 
dividualism. I  152. 

Colorado  Canon,  illustrating 
process    of    interpretation,    II, 

146  f. 
Community,    The    Universal,     I 
Lecture  II;    as  interpreter  of 
central      Christian     doctrines, 
36  ff. ;  as  doctrine  of  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  37  ff..  50  f.,  357  ;  as 
means  for  salvation,  39 ;  idea  of, 
as  one  of  the  three  central  Chris- 
tian doctrines,  39  ff. ;  analysis 
of.  62  ;  natural  history  of,  62  f. ; 
Wundt's  psychology  applied  to, 
64  f . ;  individual's  attitude  tow- 
ards,  67;    in    relation    to    the 
body  and  spirit  of  Christ,  92  f., 
97 ;  Paul's  new  conception  of, 
95   ff. ;     as    conceived   by   the 
prophets  of  Israel,  100 ;  as  s>ti- 
thesis    of     love    and    loyalty, 
100  ff . ,  loyalty  to,  Paul's  escape 
from     the     "moral     burden," 
158  f. ;    conceived  as  "human 
being,"    166    ff.,    405   ff. ;    The 
"Beloved  Community,"  Chris- 
tian name  for,  172 ;  contrasted 


|.jiyi«ya.w^jfiti)aiVg^l>iiiMMiHBiffl 


INDEX 


with     natural    social     groups,  [      physics   of.    illustrated    by   in 

183  ff. ;  contrasted  with  Nirvana,  |      ductive  sciences,  394  ff. 

190     f. ;     psychology     of     the    Comparison,     process    of,     as    t 


dogmas  in  relation  to,  203  ff. ; 
as    portrayed    in    the    Fourth 
Gospel,   211   ff. ;  treachery  to, 
295  ff. ;  triumph  of,  over  treason, 
309  ff . ;  expressed  in  a  postulate, 
322 ;  loyalty  to,  not  taught  by 
Buddhism,     .344;     central     in 
Christian  salvation,  345,  374  f . ; 
all  the  Christian  maxims  im- 
plied in  the  notion  of,  349  ff. ; 
spirit    of,    illustrated    by    the 
parable  of    the    Prodigal    Son, 
353  f . ;    relation  of  Atonement 
to,  361    ff.,  illustrated   by  the 
story  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren, 
365  ff. ;    conceived   as  divine, 
408  f. ;  relation  of  the  problem 
of   Jesus'   di\'inity   to,  415  ff. ; 
conceived  as  human  founder  of 
Christianity,   416;   II   338   ff. ; 
and      the      Time-Process,      II 
Lecture  IX ;  spirit  of,  identical 
with  Logos-principle,  16;  idea 
of,  illustrating  problem  of    the 
One  and  the  Many,  17  f.,  28  ff. ; 
past    and    memory  of,    44    ff.; 
restricted  definition  of,  52  ff., 
59    f. ;    first    condition    of    the 
existence  of,  in  the    restricted 
sense,  60  ff.,  second  condition, 
67   f.,   third    condition,   68  f. ; 
as  single  entity,   79;  union  of 
one  and  the   many   in,  80  ff. ; 
individual  as,  81 ;    cooperative 
life  of,  82  ff. ;  still  further  re- 
striction  of,    86   f . ;   as   distin- 
guished, from  other  cooperative 
groups,  87  ff . ;  love  as  conscious- 
ness of,  91  ff.;  definition  and 
analysis  of    a    Community  of 
Interpretation,      208     ff. ;      as 
scientific,   227,    232   ff . ;   meta- 
physical implications  of,  240  ff. ; 
existence    of,    presupposed    in 
the  "  Will  to  Interpret,"  253  ff. ; 
real  universe  as,  264  ff. ;  mean- 
ing   of    individual    understood 
only  in  terms  of,  312  ff. ;  meta- 


435 


form  of  interpretation,  II 
169  ff. ;  instances  of.  170ff..  193 
further  analysis  of,  194  ff. ;  in 
relation  to  Deduction,  196  ff. 
absolute  truth  resulting  from 
200  ff. ;  applied  to  other  minds 
206  ff. ;  metaphysical  impli- 
cations of,  264  ff. 

Conception,  cognitive  process, 
contrasted  with  perception,  II 
117  ff. ;  as  stated  by  Bergson, 
118,  124;  synthesis  of  percep- 
tion and,  121  ff. ;  object  of,  as 
universal,  127  f . ;  contrasted 
with  interpretation,  149  ff., 
188  ff. ;  illustrated  by  Plato, 
256  ff. ;  no  philosophy  of  pure, 
258  f. 

Confucius,  I  413. 

Consciousness,    compounding    of, 

11  31 ;  Fechner's  planetary,  33. 
Contrast,  element  of,  in  self-con- 
sciousness, I  134  ff.;  II  319  ff.; 
as  producing  social  tension, 
I  138  ff. ;  as  constituting  the 
problem  of  reality,  II  265  ff. 

Cooperation,  as  life  of  the  com- 
munity, analysis  of,  II  82  ff. ; 
psychology  of,  86  ff. 

Corinthians,  epistle  to  the,  I  96, 
101,  190,  327;  II  68,  73,  75,  345. 

Creed,  in  relation  to  the  "modern 
man,"  I  15  ff. ;  ethical  and  re- 
ligious value  of  the,  348  ;  meta- 
physical   problem    of    the,    II 

12  f. 

Dante,  comparison  of  Shake- 
speare with,  illustrating  nature 
of  interpretation,  II  176  f.,  180. 

Darwin,  illustrating  nature  of 
interpretation.  II  190.  251,  404, 
410,  414. 

Death,  in  relation  to  wilful  sin, 
I  223,  238. 

Deduction,  process  of,  analyzed, 
195  ff. 

"Depersonalization,"  process  of. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


in  scientific  method,  according  I  Harnack,  hostile  critic  of  Logos- 


^i 


to  Minot,  II  226  ff 
Dinsmore,  Charles  Allen,  I  310  n. 
Discovery,   essence  of   scientific, 

II  229  ff. 
Dogmas,    historical    problem    of 
Christian.  I  196  ff. ;  psychologi- 
cal motives  of  the,  201  ff. 

Eckhart,  Meister,  I  398. 
Egyptologist,  work  of,  illustrat- 
ing  process   of   interpretation. 

II  140  ff. 

Ephesians,  The.  I  97.  191. 

Expectation,  community  of ,  II  51. 

Experience,  new  interest  in  re- 
ligious, I  4  ff. 

Evolution,  controversies  regard- 
ing. I  8. 

Faraday's  discoveries,  interpreted, 
by  Clerk  Maxwell,  II  250. 

Fechner,  II  33  f. 

"Fitness  of  the  Environment, 
The  "  by  Henderson,  illustrating 
teleologj'  of  the  natural  world, 
ri  420n  ff. 

Fitzgerald's  Omar  Khayyam, 
quoted,  I  261. 

Galileo,  II  407,  410  f.,  413  ff. 

Gardner,  Percy,  I  196. 

Goethe,  quoted.  I  276;  II  138. 

Gospel,  Synoptic,  I  206 ;  Fourth, 
superiority  of,  206  ff. ;  its 
Logos-principle  identical  with 
spirit  of  community,  II  16. 

Gotama  Buddha,  I  330;  II  311. 

Grace,  Realm  of,  I  Lecture  IV; 
in    relation    to    loyalty,     172. 
185    ff..  408,  410;    as   human 
problem,  191 ;   as  portrayed  in 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  207  ff. ;  m 
relation  to  sin,  250  ff. 
Grades.     [See  Levels.] 
Greece,  indi\'idualism  in,  I  146  f. ; 
religion  of,  385 ;  Logos-doctrine 
of.  II  16. 

Hamlet,    instance   of   interpreta- 
tion in,  II  134,  137 


doctrine.  II  16. 

Hegel,  II  116 ;  his  dialectic,  special 
case  of  Peirce's  Theory  of  In- 
terpretation, 185  f. ;  his  philos- 
ophy of  religion,  criticised  by 
Sanday,  329.  by  Mackintosh, 
330  f .,  353. 

Hell  of  the  irrevocable,  analyzed, 
I  263  ff.,  280,  296. 

Henderson,  L.  J.,  his  "The  Fit- 
ness of  the  Environment,"  as 
illustration    of     teleology,     II 

420  n.  ff. 
"Historical  and  the  Essential, 
The,"  II  Lecture  XV ;  relation 
between  essence  of  Christianity 
and  historical  faith,  354  ff. ; 
illustrated  by  a  fictitious  mem- 
ber   of    the    Pauline    Church, 

344  ff. 
History,  religious,  first  lesson  of, 

I  385  ff. ;  second  lesson,  387  ff . ; 

third  lesson,  390  ff. 
Hope,    Community    of,    II    50; 

Pauline  Church  as,  72  ff. 


of  the  term,  II 


Idea,   definition 
180  ff. ;  186. 

Ideal,  sin  in  relation  to  one's,  I 
246  ff.  ^ 

Iliad,  The,  illustrating  nature  of 
interpretation,  II  191,  400. 

Individual,  attitude  of,  towards 
communities,  I  67  ff. ;  way- 
wardness of  the,  70;  moral 
burden    of    the.    Lecture    III. 

[See  Self.] 

Individualism,  among  Hebrews 
and  Greeks,  I  145  f . ;  intensified 
by  growth  of  socialism,  152 ; 
strife  between  collectivism  and, 
typified  by  modern  agitator, 
154  f. ;  psychology'  of,  176  ff. ; 
of  feeling,  II  19  ff. ;  of  deeds, 
24  ff . ;  explained  in  terms  of 
social  consciousness,  312  ff. 

Induction,  harmony  between  in- 
ductive sciences  and  Commu- 
nity of  Interpretation,  II  394  ff . ; 
instance    of    Schliemann's   hy- 

436 


pothesis,    400    ff. ;    teleological 
aspect  of,  411  ff. 
Instincts,    character  of,    in   rela- 
tion to  the  "moral  burden,"  I 
122  ff. 
Interpretation,   Pauline    Charity 
as,  II  98 ;  problem  of  the  nature 
of,  110;  problem  of  Christian- 
ity involving.  111;    philosophy 
and  life  depending  upon,  112; 
as  a     special  process,   114  ff. ; 
as     a     fundamental     cognitive^ 
process,    129;    illustrations   of, 
130  ff.,    140  ff. ;   knowledge  of 
self    involving,     137;    Peirce's 
central    thesis    of,    139    ff. ;    a 
triadic  relation,  140  ff. ;  applied 
to  the  time-process,  144  ff.,  271  ; 
not  a  logical  formalism,    148; 
psychology  of,  148  ff.,   155  ff., 
169  ff.;  Peirce's  "sign,"  object 
of,  148  f. ;  contrasted  with  per- 
ception and  conception,  149  ff., 
187  ff. ;    process  of  Comparison 
involving,  169  ff. ;  instances  of 
comparison,    170    ff. ;    Peirce's 
theory    of,    not    derived    from 
Hegel,  185  f . ;  deeper  meaning 
of,  187  ff. ;  in  relation  to  Deduc- 
tion, 195  ff. ;  to  truth,  200  ff. ; 
applied     to    neighbor's    mind, 
204    ff. ;    to    the    Community, 
208  ff. ;  definition  and  analysis 
of  a  Community  of  Interpre- 
tation,  211    ff. ;   loyalty  to  it, 
essence  of  scientific  spirit,  227  f ., 
252;     place    of,     in    scientific 
work   and    discovery.    231    ff.. 
illustrations.     232     ff. ;     meta- 
physical implications  of,  240  ff. ; 
office    of,     illustrated     by   the 
philosophers,   255    ff.,  274,   by 
Plato    and    Bergson,    256    ff. ; 
real  world  as   "community  of 
interpretation,"    analyzed   and 
defended,    264   ff. ;    not   static, 
270;     in   relation   to   Pragma- 
tism,   297    ff. ;    in    relation    to 
postulating  other  minds,  319  ff. ; 
of  essence    of    Christianity,  as 
illustrated  by   fictitious  mem- 


ber of  the  Pauline  Chureli, 
344  ff . ;  harmony  between  Com- 
munity of,  and  inductive 
sciences,  394  ff. ;  inductive 
sciences  illustrating  metaphys- 
ics of,  417  ff. 

Intuition,  II  193,  263. 

Israel,  propiiets  of,  in  relation  to 
Community,  I  100,  104. 

James,  William,  I  312;  on  "com- 
pounding of  consciousness,"  II 
30 ;  on  the  problem  of  the  One 
and  the  Many,  31  ff.,  115,  119, 
153 ;  his  definition  of  idea  as  a 
"leading,"  ISO  f.,  186,  199, 
291,  293.  296;  acknowledg- 
ment of  other  selves,  302  f., 
313,  315,  319,  389. 
Japanese,  the,  on  loyalty,  I  68; 

Buddhism  of,  346  f . ;  II  39. 
Jesus,  in  relation  to  Christianity 
as  a  personal  religion,  I  24; 
contrast  between,  and  inter- 
pretation of  his  mission,  26  ff. ; 
and  the  kingdom  of  Heaven, 
31  f.,  37  ff.,  50.  197  ff.,  354  ff. ; 
problematic  original  teaching 
of,  32  f. ;  his  doctrine  of  lov  -, 
76  ff. ;  its  practical  indefinite- 
ness,  86  ff. ;  synthesis  of  loyalty 
with  the  doctrine  of  love  of, 
114;  his  teaching  concerning 
wilful  sin,  227  ff. ;  problem  of 
the  divinity  of,  412  ff. 
John    the   Baptist,    truth   of  his 

teaching,  II  3S.5  f.,  3S8. 
Joseph  and  his  brethren,  story  of, 
illustrating  essence  of  Atone- 
ment, I  365  ff. 
Judaism,  individualism  in,  I 
146  f . ;  conception  of  wilful  sin 
in,  232  f. 


Kant,  in  reference  to  concep- 
tion and  perception.  II  119  f., 
122. 

Kingdom  of  Heaven,  problematic 
meaning  of,  1 31  ff. ;  as  developed 
by  Christian  community.  30  fT. ; 
as  characterized  in  the  Sermon 


437 


INDEX 


INDEX 


on  the  Mount,  49  f. ;  contrasted 
doctrines  of,  by  Jesus  and  Paul. 
74  ff . ;  containing  love,  197 ; 
conceived  as  Community,  198  f., 
342,  350  ff.,  419 ;  in  relation  to 
wilful  sin,  229  ff. ;  deeper  mean- 
ing of,  II  386  ff. 

of    in- 


Lear,    illustrating   nature 

terpretation,  II  191. 
Leibniz.  II  23.  29. 
Levels,  two,  of  human  bemgs,  I 
165    ff. ;    compared    and    con- 
trasted. 344.  405  ff. ;  compared 
with    the    "two    natures"    of 
Christ,    203    f. ;    union    of,    as 
portrayed  in  the  Fourth  Gospel, 
208  ff..  349;  II  57  f..  99. 
Liberal  Christianity,  17;    m  re- 
lation to  doctrine  of  sin,  238. 
Life,    Christian    Doctrine    of,    I 
Lecture  VII;    comparison  be- 
tween Christianity  and  Buddh- 
ism, 3.32  ff. ;  contrast,  339  ff. ; 
centering     around     the     Indi- 
vidual   and    the    Community, 
343  ff. ;  salvation  through  ideal 
Christian     Community,     345, 
378  ff. ;   expression  of  universal 
human  needs,  396  f . ;  no  mere 
morality  or  mysticism,  409  ff. ; 
metaphysical    impUcations    of. 

II  7  ff .  ,     .  ^ 

Logos,  principle  of.  identical  with 

spirit  of  Community.  II  16. 
Lord's  Supper.  The,  essential  to 
the    memory    of    the    Pauline 
Church,  II  72  f. 
Love,       Christian.       problematic 
meaning  of,  I  76  f . ;  doctrine  of. 
misunderstood.     79 ;     positive 
meaning  of,  80  ff. ;  indefimte- 
ness  in  its  practical  application, 
86  f. ;   Paul's  contribution  to, 
91    ff. ;     conceived    as   loyalty, 
98  ff. ;  for  individuals  and  com- 
munities,   contrasted,    169   ff., 
173    f . ;    instinctive  and    loyal, 
181  ff. ;    as   Charity,    352;  as 
consciousness     of     the     Com- 
munity, II  91  ff. ;  as  consUtut- 


ing  union  of  the  One  and  the 
Many,  102. 
Loyalty,  meaning  and  analysis  of, 
I  68  ff. ;  conceived  as  Christian 
love,  98  ff.,   114;  to  universal 
Community,  constituting  escape 
from  "moral  burden,"   158  f . ; 
conceived   as   grace,    172,   408, 
410;     as   instinctive   love   and 
grace,  contrasted,  108  ff. ;  new 
type  of,  analyzed,   185  ff. ;  as 
Pauline    Charity,    opposed    to 
Nirvana,    190   ff. ;   religion   of, 
193  ff.,  II  6 ;  spirit  of,  as  por- 
trayed in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  I 
208  ff.,  401 ;    as  consciousness 
of  the  community,   II  98;  to 
Community  of  Interpretation, 
218  f. ;  loyalty  to  it,  essence  of 
scientific     research,    252;    atti- 
tude of    the  will  in   terms  of, 
309  ff. 


Macbeth,   instance  of   self-inter- 
pretation in,  II  137. 
Mackintosh,  R.  H.,  his  criticism 
of    Hegel's    philosophy    of    re- 
ligion, II  330  ff.,  353. 
Malthus,  in  relation  to  Darwin, 
illustrating  nature  of  interpre- 
tation, II  190. 
Master.    [See  Jesus.] 
Mathematics,    deductive    process 

of,  analyzed,  II  197  ff. 
Maxwell's  theoretical  interpreta- 
tion of  Faraday's  discoveries, 
II  250. 
Memory,  community  of,  II  50  f . ; 

PauUne  Church  as  a,  69  ff. 
Metaphors,  Paul's,  in  relation  to 

the  doctrine  of  love^  I  92  f. 
Milton,  I  373. 

Minot,  Charles  S.,  quoted,  II 
225;  his  category  of  "deper- 
sonalization" in  scientific 
method,  analyzed,  226  ff.,  233, 
247  f.,  250,  273. 
Miracle  of  grace,  worked  by 
loyalty  to  "Beloved  Com- 
munity." I  185. 
"Modern  Man,"  conception  of,  I 


15  flF. ;  as  fictitious  being,  16  flF. ; 
as  postulate  embodj-ing  "Edu- 
cation of  the  human  race," 
17  ff . ;  in  relation  to  Christianity, 
19  ff.,  28  ff. ;  in  relation  to  sin 
and  hell,  236  ft.;  geocentric 
view  of,  II  7 ;  analogy  between, 
and  fictitious  Pauline  Christian. 
370  «. 

Modern  Mind,  and  the  Christian 
Ideas,  I  Lecture  VIII;  three 
historical  religious  lessons  for 
the,  385  ff. ;  lessons  of  the 
present  day.  393  f. ;  mysticism 
and,  398  flf. ;  orthodoxy  and, 
402  f. ;  real  choice  for,  404  fif. ; 
in  relation  to  the  problem  of 
the  divinity  of  Jesus,  412  ff. 

"Mystery,"  Paul's  use  of,  I  92  ff. 

Mysticism,  conceived  as  solution 
of  the  problem  of  Christianity, 
I  398  ff, ;  Bergson's.  II  307  f . 

Napoleon,  II  235. 

New  Jerusalem,  I  58,  106. 

Newton,  II  413. 

New  Zealanders'  memory  of  the 

Community,  II  45  ff.,  69. 
Nietzsche,  I  155. 
Nirvana,  contrasted  with  Pauline 

Charity,  I  190  f.,  336. 


Omar  Khayyam,  quoted.  I  261. 

One  and  the  Many.  The.  problem 
of,  illustrated  by  idea  of  Com- 
munity, II  17  f. ;  the  one  as 
many.  19  ff. ;  the  many  as  one. 
26  ff. ;  Wundt's  psychology  of, 
26  ff. ;  James's,  30  ff. ;  union 
of,  in  the  Community,  80  ff., 
in  love,  103;  solution  of  the 
problem  of,  in  the  Community 
of  Interpretation,  213,  219  ff. 

Opponent,  attitude  of,  towards 
Christianity,  I  8  f. 

Oriental  view  of  Christianity,  I 
8;  fatalism,  261. 


438 


Paul,  Apostle,  as  "modem  man" 
of  his  time.  I  18  f. ;  as  critic 
of  the  individual,  41  f. ;  in  con- 

439 


trast    to    Jesus'    Kingdom     of 
Heaven,  74  f. ;  his  contribution 
to  the  doctrine  of  love,  78,  91 ; 
his  use  of  "Mystery,"  92  ff.  ; 
his  conception  of  love  as  loyalty,' 
98  ff.,  114;    in  relation  to  the 
"moral   burden."    117   ff. ;   his 
notion  of  "the  law,"  133;  his 
opinion    about    Gentiles,    136, 
153  ;    his  analysis  of  sin  in  the 
seventh  chapter  of   the  epistle 
to  the  Romans,  148  ff.,  176  ff. ; 
his    escape    from    the    "moral 
burden,"       through       loyalty, 
157  ff.,  178 ;  his  conception  of 
loyalty   as   Christian.    170   ff. ; 
his      "Beloved     Community" 
contrasted    with    other    social 
groups.  182  ff. ;  his  new  type  of 
loyalty,  analyzed.    185  ff. ;  his 
"beatific    vision,"    190    ff. ;    as 
conceived  by  Matthew  Arnold, 
217  ff. ;  his  view  of  "dying  to 
sin,"    250    ff. ;    in    relation    to 
Atonement,     285    ff..    363    f . ; 
his  fulfilment  of  the  parables, 
355;    as  mystic,  400;  and  the 
memory  of  the  Pauline  Church, 
II  69  ff. ;  his  synthesis  of  the 
memory  and  the  hope  of  the 
Church,  76  ff. ;  his  love  as  emo- 
tion and  interpretation,  96  ff. ; 
in  relation  to  the  processes   of 
Comparison  and  Interpretation, 
191,   221;    his  attitude  of  the 
will    as   loyalty,    310   ff.,    325; 
his      community      as      human 
founder  of  Christianity.  338  f. ; 
essence    of    Christianity   illus- 
trated by  a  fictitious  member 
of  his  Church.  344  ff. 
Pauhne    Church.      [See    Church, 

Community,  and  Paul.] 
Peirce.  Charies,  II  114;  as  in- 
ventor of  Pragmatism,  115; 
direct  perception  of  the  self 
denied  by.  138;  his  central 
thesis  of  Interpretation.  139  ff. ; 
triadic  nature  of  Comparison, 
theory  of,  169  ff. ;  his  idea  of 
"a  third,"   173  ff.;  bis  theory 


INDEX 


of  Interpretation    not  derived 
from   Hegel,    116,    184  ff . ;   his 
analysis  of  Deduction,  196  ff. ; 
his  terra   "Sign"   defined  and 
analyzed,    281    ff. ;   illustrated. 
286  ff.;  his  teleologicul  theory 
of  Induction,  385  ff. ;  illustrated 
by     Schliemann's     hypothesis, 
400  ff.,  by  Henderson's   book, 
420  n.  ff. 
**  Penal  satisfaction,"  objections  to 
theory  of,  I  284  ff. ;  contrasted 
with  "moral  theories"  of  Atone- 
ment, 288  f . ;  applied  to  story 
of    Joseph    and    his  brethren, 
366  f. 
Penalty,    endless,    in   relation   to 
wilful  sin,  I  234  f.,  238,  377; 
as   "hell   of   the   irrevocable," 
267,  280. 
Perception,  cognitive  process  of, 
contrasted  with  conception,  II 
117  ff. ;  as  stated  by  Bergson, 
118,    124,    256    ff. ;    synthesis 
of    conception    and,     121    ff. ; 
object  of,   as  datum,    127   f. : 
contrasted  with  Interpretation, 


incapable    of    describing    De- 
duction, 199,  262  ff.,  289,  291  ff., 
296  ;    acknowledgment  of  other 
selves  by,  304  ff. 
Problem    of    Christianity,    The, 
explanation    of    title,    I    3    ff . ; 
provisionally  formulated,  13  ff. ; 
as    synthesis    of    philosophical 
and  historical  problems,  21  ff . ; 
II  Lecture  XV ;    in  relation  to 
personal  religion,   I    23  ff.,   to 
interpreted  doctrine,  25;  three 
central    ideas    of,    35    ff. ;    de- 
fined, 45  ;   involving  problem  of 
the   Christian    Church,    53   f . ; 
further  definition  of,  106 ;  mys- 
ticism   as    solution,     398    ff. ; 
orthodoxy  as  solution,  403  ff. ; 
real      solution      in      Christian 
Doctrine  of  Life.  Lecture  VII, 
404  ff. ;  relation  to  the  problem 
of  the  di\anity  of  Jesus,  412  ff. ; 
not  a  mere  historical  problem, 
420  ff . ;  II   104  ;    illustrated  by 
fictitious     Pauline     Christian, 
344    ff. ;     final    statement    of, 
369  ff.     [See  Christianity.] 


149  ff     188  ff. ;  no  philosophy    Prodigal  Son,  parable  of,  m  re- 


of  pure,  258  f 

Pessimism,  Buddhistic,  I  340  f. 

Philanthropy,  modern,  in  relation 
to  Christian  doctrine  of  love,  I 
88  f. 

Pilate,  Pontius,  II  71.  380  ff. 

Plato,  on  communities,  I  61;  II 
119;  illustrating  office  of  In- 
terpretation. 256  ff.,  261,  266. 

Pluralism,  II  17  f. ;  of  selves,  19, 
28,44. 

"Pluralistic  Universe,"  by  James, 
1130,115. 

Pragmatism,  I  386;  Peirce,  m- 
ventor  of ,  II 1 15  ;  its  "  practical " 
character,  122;  conception  of 
Absolute,  123 ;  depending  upon 
dualism  of  cognitive  process, 
153;  definition  and  use  of 
"idea"  as  a  "leading"  and 
"working,"  181,  199,  241  f., 
289,  305  f. ;  in  relation  to  the 
process  of  Comparison,  194  ff. ; 


lation  to  sin,  I  239 ;  not  appli- 
cable  to   the    "traitor,"    292; 
illustrating     spirit     of     Com- 
munity, 353  f. 
Protestantism,  criticised  by  Mat- 
thew Arnold,  I  217  ff. 
Psychology,  in  relation  to  com- 
munities, I  62  ;  social,  Wundt's, 
64  f.,  167;  II  26  ff . ;  of  moral 
conduct,   I  127  ff. ;   of  individ- 
ualism, 176  ff.;  of  the  Chris- 
tian  dogmas,    203   ff. ;   of   the 
origins    of     Christian     experi- 
ence, 419;  of  the  one  and  the 
many,  II  17  ff. ;  James's  views, 
30  ff . ;  of  cooperation,  86  ff . ; 
of  Interpretation,  148  ff.,  155  ff., 
169  ff.,  205,  237. 
Puritanism,    criticised    by   Mat- 
thew Arnold,  I  217  ff.,  234. 


Reality,  problem  of,   stated  and 
defined,  II  264  ff. ;  not  "static," 


440 


'  ■'^^^"^■^;|?^:^=|S^ 


INDEX 


270  f . ;  not  expressible  in  ex- 
clusively perceptual  or  con- 
ceptual terms,  274. 

Revelation,  I  410. 

Ritschl,  II  329. 

Romans,  epistle  to  the,  I  117, 
122,  124  ff.,  seventh  chapter 
of,  analyzed,  147  ff.,  217. 

Russell,  Bertrand,  II  119,  196. 

Sabatier,  his  "moral  theory"  of 
Atonement,  I  288  f. 

Salvation,  in  relation  to  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven,  I  49 ;  through 
loyalty,  158  f.,  181,  185  ff., 
376 ;  through  destruction  of  the 
natural  self,  344  ;  as  Atonement, 
364. 

Samaritan,  the  Good,  parable  of, 

I  94. 

Sanday,  quoted  from  his  "Christol- 
ogies,   Ancient    and   Modern," 

II  329  ;  his  criticism  of  Hegel's 
philosophy  of  religion,  330. 

Schiller.  F.  C.  S.,  I  190. 

Schliemann,  his  hypothesis  il- 
lustrating harmony  of  inter- 
pretation and  induction,  II 
400  ff. 

Schopenhauer,  II  266 ;  his  analy- 
sis of  the  Will,  298  ff.,  324. 

Self,  time-process  in  relation  to, 
II  40  ff. ;  no  mere  datum,  61  f. ; 
ideal  extension  of,  63  ff.,  96  ff. ; 
as  Community,  81 ;  accept- 
ance of  other  selves,  302  ff.; 
in  terms  of  social  consciousness, 
312  ff. 

Sense,  historical,  in  relation  to 
the  understanding  of  Chris- 
tianity, I  59. 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  character- 
izing Kingdom  of  Heaven,  I  49  ; 
religion  and  ethics  illustrated 
by,  327. 

Shakespeare,  comparison  of  Dante 
with,  illustrating  nature  of  in- 
terpretation, II  176,  180,  193. 

Signs,  Doctrine  of,  The,  II  Lec- 
ture XIV;  ".Sign,"  Peirce's 
object  of  Interpretation,    148, 


152 ;    definition    and    analj^is 
of  the  term,   281   ff.,    illustra- 
tions,    286     ff, ;     metaphysical 
thesis  stated  in  terms  of,  284; 
in  relation  to  Pragmatism  and 
Radical    Empiricism,    297    ff. ; 
other     selves     interpreted     in 
terms  of,  316  ff. ;  extension  of, 
324  f. 
Sin,   original,   in    relation  to  the 
"moral  burden,"  I  122;  sense 
of,  analyzed   by    Matthew  Ar- 
nold, 217  ff. ;  Arnold's  view  of, 
criticised,  221  ff. ;  original  and 
voluntary,  224  f . ;  teaching  of 
Jesus    concerning    wilful.    227 ; 
attitude  of  "modern  man "  tow- 
ards,   236    f. ;     the    unpardon- 
able, analyzed,  243  ff. ;  dying 
to,   250;   equation   of   the   un- 
pardonable with  conscious  be- 
trayal,   253  f. ;    Arnold's  view 
of,    applied    to    the    "traitor," 
257   ff.;    the   "hell   of  the  ir- 
revocable" applied  to,  203  ff. ; 
in      relation     to     Atonement, 
361  ff. 

Sistine  Madonna,  illustrating  na- 
ture of  Interpretation.  II   191. 

Social  aspect,  of  self-conscious- 
ness, I  132  ff. ;  in  conflict  with 
the  individual,  140  ff. ;  and  in- 
dividual contrasted  in  Paul's 
epistle  to  the  Romans,  148  ff. ; 
the  growth  of  the,  intensifying 
indiWdualism,  152,  176  ff. ;  psy- 
chology of  [see  Psychology]. 

Socrates,  I  413. 

Spinoza,  quoted,  I  109;  his  idea 
of  Substance,  analyzed,  II 
261  ff.,  275. 

Spirit,  problem  of  the  Holy,  of 
central  importance,  II  13  ff. 

Strauss,  David  Frederic,  quoted, 
II  3.30,  332  f. 

Substance,  Spinoza's,  analyzed,  II 
261  ff.,  275. 

Tarde,  his  .social  psychology,  II 86. 

Teleology,  in  the  natural  world, 

illustrated  by  inductive  sciences, 


441 


INDEX 


II  394  ff . ;  by  Henderson's  book, 
420  n.  ff. 

Tension,  social,  produced  by  so- 
cial contrasts,  I  138  ff. 

Theology,  meaning  of,  as  meta- 
physical interpretation  of  the 
Universal  Community,  II  11; 
problem  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
central  in,  13. 

"Third,  A,"  Peirce's  idea  of,  II 
173  ff. ;  applied  to  interpreta- 
tion of  the  neighbor's  mind, 
204  f.,  214. 

Time-Process,  and  the  Commu- 
nity, The,  II  Lecture  IX ;  ex- 
tension of  the  self  in,  basis  of 
theory  of  Community,  99  ;  ap- 
plied to  theory  of  Interpreta- 
tion, 144  ff.,  to  "Community 
of  Interpretation,"  270  flf.,  to 
Doctrine  of  Signs,  289  ff. 

Traitor,  moral  situation  of  the, 
analyzed.  I  254  ff . ;  hypothetical 
answer  of,  to  Arnold's  view  of 
sin,  259  ff. ;  "irrevocable  hell" 
of  the,  263  ff. ;  his  relation  to 
Atonement,  278  fif. ;  his  re- 
jection of  the  "penal  satis- 
faction" theory,  285,  of  the 
"moral  theories,"  290  ff. 

Treason,  possibility  of,  analyzed, 
I  254  ff. ;  irrevocable  character 
of,  2G0  ff . ;  as  affecting  the  Com- 
munity, 295  ff. ;  triumph  over, 
306  ff. ;  story  of  Joseph  and 
his  brethren,  365  ff. 
Triadic  character  of  Interpreta- 
tion, II 140  ff.;  of  Comparison, 
170  ff. 


Trinity,  dogma  of,  psychological 
motive  for,  I  203,  205  ;  doctrine 
of,  II  14. 

Troeltsch,  I  196  ;  quoted,  200  f. 

"Urteilskraft."  Kant's,  II  121. 

Vaihinger's  "Philosophie  des  Ala 
Ob,"  II  292  ff. 

"Varieties  of  Religious  Experi- 
ence," by  James,  II  34. 

Vision,  apocalyptic,  revealing  the 
true  Church,  I  58. 

"Vita  Nuova,"  Dante's,  II  177. 

"Voluntarism,  Absolute,"  true 
implication  of  Pragmatism,  II 
292. 

Whistler,  I  151. 

Will,  social,  producing  moral 
self-consciousness,  I  132  ff. ; 
social,  in  conflict  with  self-will, 
140  ff.,  176  ff. ;  same  conflict 
appearing  in  seventh  chapter  of 
epistle  to  Romans,  148  ff. ; 
Schopenhauer's,  analysis  of,  II 
298  ff.,  affirmation  of,  298  ff., 
denial  of,  305  ff. ;  as  loyalty, 
309  ff. 

Will  to  Interpret,  The,  II  Lec- 
ture XII;  as  will  to  be  self- 
possessed,  193  ff . ;  in  a  Commu- 
nity of  Interpretation,  218  ff . ; 
presupposes  existence  and 
reality  of  such  Community, 
253  ff. 

Wundt's  "  Volkerpsychologie,"  I 
64  f..  167;  II  26  ff..  86. 


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the  positions  of  recent  pragmatism,  and  why  the  frequent  identi- 
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The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty 

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loyal  at  all,  or  wise.  Moreover,  true  loyalty  must  express  itself  practi- 
cally, in  the  way  of  a  man's  life,  in  his  deeds.  Cherished  without  rea- 
soning, and  to  no  really  practical  purpose,  it  avails  nothing.  The  drift 
of  circumstances  that  may  make  a  man  of  high  and  strong  personal 
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single  phrase  —  the  cultivation  of  a  spirit  of  loyalty.  .  .  .  His  work  is 
immediately  and  concretely  inspiring  to  the  man  not  at  all  concerned 
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in  the  affairs  of  every-day  existence.  It  helps  him  to  appreciate  the 
poverty  of  egotistical  ideals  —  such  as  the  ideal  of  power  —  and  it 
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living."  —  The  Outlook. 

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is  moral  enthusiasm  in  it,  there  is  patriotism  in  it,  there  is  love  of  hu- 
manity in  it.  It  comes  from  the  heart  of  a  man,  from  the  big  heart  of  a 
big  man,  from  a  fine  loyal  soul.  Fichte  never  spoke  with  greater  fer- 
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Race  Questions,  Provincialism,  and  Other 
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OTHER  WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

The  World  and  the  Individual.  Two  volumes 

Gifford  Lectures  deUvered  before  the  University  at  Aberdeen 

First  Series :  The  Four  Historical  Conceptions  of  Being    Ij.oo  net 
Second  Series :  Nature,  Man,  and  the  Moral  Order  U-zs  «^^ 


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